2010/04/03 by Supti Sadhukhan, Sadhukhan, Supti, Tapati Dutta +5
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Composite Material Mechanics #FOS: Physical sciences #Nanopore and Nanochannel Transport Studies #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1004.0414
arxiv created 2010/04/03 · openalex publication_date 2010/04/03 · arxiv updated 2010/04/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Composite materials are often stronger than their constituents. We demonstrate this through a spring network model on a square lattice. Two different types of sites (A and B) are distributed randomly on the lattice, representing two different constituents. There are springs of three types connecting them (A-A, B-B and A-B). We assign two spring parameters for each type of spring. these are a spring constant and a breaking threshold. Here we show that intermediate compositions may require higher energy to induce the first sample-spanning break than either pure A or pure B. So the breaking energy goes through a maximum as the concentration of one component varies from 0 to 100%. The position and height of the peak depend on the spring parameters. Moreover, certain combinations of spring parameters can produce composites, which do not break upto a specified strain limit. Thus a fracture 'percolation threshold' may be defined.