Effective materials properties: Determination and application in mechanical design and optimization

Abstract

A finite element procedure for determination of effective mechanical, thermal and thermomechanical properties of multi-phase materials is developed in this paper. To account for the variation in phases contiguity with the change in volume fractions, a computer-based procedure is proposed for generation of the materials microstructure. The procedure is applied to the cobalt-tungsten carbide (Co-WC) two-phase material. The results show significantly better agreement with their experimental counterparts compared with analytical methods of predicting effective materials properties. Finally, the case of flywheel optimization is used to demonstrate that accurate determination of effective materials properties can be very critical in heterogeneous-materials design problems.