Interface plays a critical role in the mechanical performance of composites. Lack of a suitable interface design has long been a bottleneck impeding the full exploitation of the mechanical strengths of many superior reinforcement phases such as the high-performance carbon fibers and carbon nanotubes. Here a Floquet-based bar-spring model is developed to simulate the elastic and failure behaviors of three topological designs of heterogeneous interface inspired by the load-bearing biological materials in nature: end-concentrated, center-concentrated, and uniform pattern. Through comparative analyses, the advantages and disadvantages of every topological design are presented, and the guidelines of design optimization are summarized. The newly developed method is convenient and computationally economical for studying the mechanical behaviors of fiber/platelet reinforced composites. The study on the bioinspired design of interfaces not only shed lights on the interface strengthening and toughening mechanisms in natural materials but also give valuable guidelines for artificial interface designs.
For more details, please refer to our paper through the link below:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2020.112665