Breakage and debonding of short brittle fibres among particulates in a metal matrix

The competition of failure by fibre cracking or decohesion of the fibre-matrix interface is analysed for aluminium reinforced by aligned, short SiC fibres. An axisymmetric unit-cell model containing a number of differently shaped fibres or particulates is used here to represent failure by debonding or fracture of a relatively long discontinuous fibre among particulates that do not fail. A cohesive zone model that accounts for normal separation as well as tangential separation is used to represent debonding, while fibre fracture is represented by a critical value of the average tensile stress on a cross-section. The effect of various distributions of different size fibres is investigated.