On the thermostatics of composite materials

Abstract The problem of determining overall thermoelastic moduli of some solid composites is discussed. The phases may be arbitrarily anisotropic. One phase is required to be a matrix and the remainder are required to be aligned ellipsoidal inclusions. The volume concentrations are arbitrary. Some exact results are obtained for a binary composite. In the general case the self-consistent method is used to estimate the overall moduli. The general results are shown to reduce to those known for an isotropic dispersion of spheres.