Effect of Particle Shape and Size on Behavior of Composite Material Using Finite Element Method.

In this paper the effect of particle shape and size on the mechanic behavior of glass-particle reinforcing Nylon matrix composite is evaluated. There are many parameters effecting on the composite such as types, size, position and shape of reinforcement material. Particle morphology has received enormous interest in particulate composite; small particles adhere strongly to the polymer, which leads to a strong reinforcing effect. The objective of this research is to investigate the influence of reinforcement shape and size with different volume fractions and for three packing (square, hexagonal and random) using finite element method. The composite is subject to unidirectional tensile loading. Numerical results are presented for a variety of particle shapes and size including circular, triangular, square and two distributions grouping these shapes together. The results show that the variation of the Von Mises and longitudinal stresses consistently increased when the shape of the reinforcement changed from triangle to square, distribution 1 and distribution 2 to circular in this order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]