Large Scale Analysis of Mechanical Properties in 3-D Fiber-Reinforced Composites Using a New Fast Multipole Boundary Element Method

Fiber-reinforced composites are commonly used in various engineering applications. The mechanical properties of such composites depend strongly on micro-structural parameters. This paper presents a new boundary element method (BEM) for numerical analysis of the mechanical properties of 3-D fiber-reinforced composites. Acceleration of the BEM is achieved by means of a fast multipole method (FMM), in allowing large scale simulations of a finite elastic domain containing up to 100 elastic fibers to be performed on one personal computer. The maximum number of degrees of freedom can reach a value of over 250000. The effects of several key micro-structural parameters on the local stress fields and on the effective elastic moduli of fiber-reinforced composites are evaluated. The numerical results are compared with analytical predictions and good agreement is observed. The results show that the fast multipole BEM could be a promising tool for further understanding of the mechanical behavior of such composites.