COUPLED FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF FUNCTIONALLY GRADED FIBER REINFORCED COMPOSITES FOR EFFECTIVE ELASTIC PROPERTIES

The present work deals with the determination of effective elastic properties of fiber graded composite lamina, with varying fiber-volume fraction (FVF) along the thickness direction. In the available analysis, the effective elastic properties are evaluated based on continuous FVF and decoupled representative volume element (RVE) at every point along the thickness direction. A sub-volume is designed with varying FVF, according to sine function of thickness direction. In order to determine the effective graded material properties without any of these assumptions, a continuum micromechanics finite element model is derived. The RV is composed of several sub-volumes of different FVF and homogenization technique is applied over these sub-volumes, without decoupling these from the whole RV. The characteristics of effective elastic properties according to sine function are discussed.