Modelling hybrid effects on the stiffness of aligned discontinuous composites with hybrid fibre-types

Abstract Hybrid discontinuous composites offer the possibility to tailor the composite properties for specific applications, improve their manufacturability, and reduce cost by introducing cheaper fibres. However, the mechanical behaviour of hybrid composites often shows hybrid effects which cannot be modelled by the rule-of-mixtures and are therefore challenging to predict and explain. This paper presents models to calculate the Young's modulus of different discontinuous hybrid composites, which is affected by such hybrid effects. The models are based on shear-lag and consider two types of hybrid discontinuous architectures: (i) a deterministic “brick-and-mortar” architecture consisting of perfectly staggered platelets with two different Young's moduli and thicknesses, and (ii) a stochastic architecture of aligned fibres with two different Young's moduli and diameters, with randomly allocated fibre-ends and random or organised intermingling. The models show good agreement with numerical and experimental validations; their results show that hybrid interactions between different types of fibres or platelets reduce the Young's modulus of hybrid discontinuous composites, which justifies the negative hybrid effects observed.