Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Award Date

2017

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department / School

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Zhong Hu

Abstract

The desire to make high strength, lightweight, less corrosive, high fatigue resistance materials in auto industries, aero industries, biomedical industries have given a chance for in-depth study of composite materials. To get the profound knowledge of composites, different experiments are conducted which often take huge resources, cost and time. Computer modeling and analysis have gained popularity in Finite Element Analysis (FEA) because it can be used to predict the mechanical property of different materials. In this thesis, FEA technique has been used to predict mechanical property of discontinuous fiber reinforced composites (FRC). If we are able to foretell the mechanical property of discontinuous fiber reinforced composites (FRC), it can be used- being easy and less expensive to manufacture than continuous discontinuous fiber reinforced composites (FRC). The objective of this thesis is to find out the behavior of discontinuous fiber reinforced composites under tensile, compressive and shear test. Different volume percentage of random fibers, matrix was generated, which was subjected to FEA simulation. ANSYS 2015, commercially available Finite Element Analysis software, was used to generate model and as a solver. During tensile test, the model subjected to 1% elongation in one direction and other two directions were kept fixed. Displacement and force at each node was found, and later used to find Young’s Modulus and Poisson’s Ratio. For shear test, one plane was fixed while the opposite plane was given a deformation of 1%, displacement and force at each node was noted at different length of a model, which was further used to calculate Shear Modulus. Material property like Young’s Modulus, Shear modulus increased as the aspect ratio or volume percentage of fiber was increased however Poisson’s ratio was decreased as the fiber aspect ratio or volume percentage was increased.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Fibrous composites -- Mechanical properties.
Composite materials -- Mechanical properties.
Finite element method.

Description

Includes bibliographical references (pages 53-56)

Format

application/pdf

Number of Pages

66

Publisher

South Dakota State University

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Rights Statement

In Copyright