Tan's hot topic series

CONTINUUM MODELING OF INTERFACES IN POLYMER MATRIX COMPOSITES REINFORCED BY CARBON NANOTUBES

L. Y. JIANG, H. TAN, J. WU, Y. HUANG, K. -C. HWANG
Review Article, 2007, accepted by NANO

The interface behavior may significantly influence the mechanical properties of carbon nanotube (CNT)-reinforced composites due to the large interface area per unit volume at the composite. The modeling of CNT/polymer interfaces has been a challenge in the continuum modeling of CNT reinforced composites.

The effect of van der Waals-based interface cohesive law on carbonnanotube-reinforced composite materials

H. Tan, L. Y. Jiang, Y. Huang, B. Liu, and K. C. Hwang
Composite Science and Technology, 2007, accepted.

This blog focuses on the micromechanics modeling of composite materials.

This blog focuses on viscoelasticity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscoelasticity)

Experimentally, loading to a mechanical system can be applied either through the displacement control or the force control.

However, the responses of the system can only be measured in displacements, and hence strains.

an interesting puzzle for fun:

Lame’s classical solution for an elastic 2D plate, with a hole of radius a and uniform tensile stress applied at the far field, gives a stress concentration factor (SCF) of two at the edge of the hole. This SCF=2 is independent of the hole radius.

Consider what happened to this concentration factor if the radius a approaches infinitely small. The SCF is independent of a, so it remains equal to two even when the hole disappears.