Modelling particulate composite using SPH Method

In recent years, the research and development of composites have received more attention due to rapid increase in demand for composites in various applications. The particulate composites have been used in many fields, for example, to produce functionally graded materials which are potential solutions to biomedical and other modern engineering applications. Many analytical and numerical methods have been developed to evaluate the effective properties and the failure characteristics of composite materials. The particle based methods such as SPH can be effectively applied to model particulate composites by exploiting the advantages of its meshless nature and the ability to model large deformation with fracture. Complicated geometrical configurations of particulate composites obtained from techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) can be easily converted to particle based mesh without loosing much information. This enables more accurate analysis of the chosen composite materials. Therefore, a Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) based numerical technique is developed here to investigate the mechanical properties and evolution of debonding process in particulate composites. In this paper, the Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics method is applied to simulate the mechanical properties and fracture process of the particulate composites. The main emphasis is on applying SPH technique to model particulate composites and to develop related numerical procedures for such application.