STRENGTH ANALYSIS OF RANDOM SHORT-FIBER-REINFORCED METAL-MATRIX COMPOSITE-MATERIALS

A theory to analyse the strength of composite materials with randomly oriented short fibres has been developed. The short fibres are assumed to be uniformly distributed and randomly oriented in three dimensions . The non-homogeneous deformation within the composite has been taken into account in the strength calculation. The influences of thermal st ress in the short fibres, the short-fibre dispersion hardening and the dislocation density in the matrix on the composite strength have all been estimated, and the strengthening mechanisms involved are discusse d. A comparison with previous strength theory suggests that the presen t theory gives a better agreement with experimental data, and can be u sed to explain some experimental phenomena that remain unsolved.