The effects of thermal residual stresses and interfacial properties on the transverse behaviors of fiber composites with different microstructures

Abstract This study presents a new micromechanical model to investigate the effects of thermal residual stresses and interfacial properties on the transverse behaviors of SiC/Ti composites with different microstructures. In this model, the fiber-matrix interface is modeled by the bilinear cohesive zone model. The interface model is introduced into the generalized method of cells, which has the advantage of computational accuracy and efficiency. At the same time, the generalized method of cells is extended to consider thermal residual stresses within the fiber and matrix phases. Thermal residual stresses are found to have a significant influence on the transverse behaviors of the composites. Compared with the perfect interface, the transverse behaviors of the composites with weak interface bonding are much lower. Moreover, with the increase of fiber fraction, the stiffness of the composites increases before debonding occurs while the saturation stress decreases. The predicted results using the circular fiber model and considering thermal residual stresses are more consistent with the experimental values compared with the results using the square or elliptical fiber model. When the stress concentration factor is considered and the interface is weakly bonding, the strength predictions are much better than the results using the perfect bonding.