TY  - EJOU
AU  - Araújo, F.C.  
AU  - Gray, L.J.  

TI  - Evaluation of Effective Material Parameters of CNT-reinforced Composites via 3D BEM
T2  - Computer Modeling in Engineering \& Sciences

PY  - 2008
VL  - 24
IS  - 2&3
SN  - 1526-1506

AB  - In recent years, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been widely employed to build advanced composites. In this work, a Boundary Element Method (BEM) is applied to 3D representative volume elements (RVEs) to estimate mechanical properties of CNT-based composites. To model the thin-walled nanotubes, special integration procedures for calculating nearly-strongly-singular integrals have been developed. The generic BE substructuring algorithm allows modeling complex CNT-reinforced polymers, containing any number of nanotubes of any shape (straight or curved). The subregion-by-subregion strategy, based on Krylov solvers, makes the independent generation, assembly, and storage of the many parts of the complete BE model possible. Thus, significant memory and CPU-time reductions are achieved in avoiding working with an explicit global system of equations. Further CPU-time reduction is obtained by employing a matrix-copy option for repeated subregions. Several applications will illustrate the ability of this algorithm to analyze CNT-based composites.
KW  - CNT-based composites
KW  -  3D BE formulations
KW  -  singular and quasi-singular quadratures
KW  -  subregion-by-subregion techniques
KW  -  the boundary element method

DO  - 10.3970/cmes.2008.024.103