Closed-form analytical solutions for predicting stress transfers and thermo-elastic properties of short fiber composites

Novel analytical solutions with closed-form expressions for the stress and displacement fields of short fiber reinforced composites (SFRCs) and analytical prediction of their effective thermo-elastic properties are presented. The cylindrical SFRC unit-cells with periodic boundary conditions are subjected to axial and transverse stresses as well as thermally induced residual stresses. By comparison with available numerical and analytical solutions, it is revealed that the present closed-form solutions provide accurate stress field variations as well as accurate predictions for the effective thermo-elastic properties of SFRCs in a split second, and thus, the developed model is much more computationally efficient than numerical methods.