Determination of Young’s Moduli of the Phases of Composite Materials Reinforced with Longitudinal Fibers, by Global Measurements

Abstract

The properties of a composite material are determined by the properties of the constitutive materials. In engineering practice, there are many situations in which we have composite material, but we do not have information about the properties of each phase component. The measurements we can make in such cases are on the existing material, thus being able to determine, experimentally, the global physical properties of the composite. The possibility of realizing an estimate of the mechanical properties of each component poses a problem if we start from these measurements. The paper proposes a method to achieve this, starting from the theoretical estimates established in the literature, then illustrated by an example to determine the properties of wood. Wood is a transverse isotropic material and therefore the constitutive law has symmetries that are manifested in the decrease of the number of parameters that define the stress-strain liason, defined only by five independent parameters. The proposed method can be extended to a diversity of models and materials used in the study of composite materials.