Micromechanical modeling of mechanical behavior of Ti-6Al-4V/TiB composites using FEM analysis

A micromechanics finite element model is developed for the computation of the mechanical properties of Ti-6Al-4V/TiB reinforced composites, containing various volume fractions of TiB. A simplified numerical model capable of predicting the macroscopic mechanical behavior of the Ti-6Al-4V/TiB composites is implemented using a periodic microstructure representation accompanied with uniform orientation of the TiB whiskers. Thereupon a three-dimensional finite element unit cell is adopted and subjected to longitudinal as well as transverse loadings in order to extract the mechanical properties governing the corresponding directions. Several material parameters of the composites such as the Young's modulus, Poisson' ratio and yield stress are under consideration. The numerical predictions of the mechanical response are compared with those produced by the Halpin-Tsai model for short fibers, the simple rule of mixture approximations and experimental results where possible. Good agreement between them can be found. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.