Elastic interaction between ellipsoidal inhomogeneities with imperfect interface and effective stiffness of particulate composite

The complete displacement solution has been obtained for an elastic solid containing a finite cluster of imperfectly bonded ellipsoidal inhomogeneities. By combining Papkovich-Neuber representation of a general solution in terms of scalar harmonic potentials, expansion of these potentials in terms of solid ellipsoidal harmonics, superposition principle and accurate fulfilling the interface conditions, the boundary value problem is reduced to an infinite system of linear algebraic equations for the series expansion coefficients. The modified Maxwell scheme has been extended to the elastic ellipsoidal particle composite with imperfect interface. The scheme takes into account the volume content and elastic moduli of constituents, shape, size and orientation of inhomogeneities, interaction between them and elastic stiffness of interface. Numerical algorithm of the method is simple and robust and provides an accurate analysis of the problem for a whole range of the structure parameters. The reported numerical data illustrate convergence rate of the solution and the effect of interactions and interface stiffness on the stress field and macroscopic elastic moduli of ellipsoidal particle composite. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.