Techniques for Calculating Effective Material Properties From 3D Composite Data

Scanning composite samples using computed tomography (CT) and other imaging modalities can produce high quality data sets suitable for analysing material properties in finite element (FE) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers, complementing physical experiments. However, 3D image data of complex heterogeneous structures can be difficult to work with for designers and analysts. It is computationally too demanding to take into account the detailed material microstructure while simulating macroscopic systems or devices containing composite materials. Therefore one seeks to replace them by homogenous materials with ‘effective’ material properties chosen so that their response to macroscopic external loads closely resembles the behaviour of the original structure. Focusing on the use of numerical homogenisation techniques, it is possible to suggest a workflow progressing from a 3D scan of a material sample to its effective properties.