THERMAL-ANALYSIS OF A FUNCTIONALLY GRADED MATERIAL SUBJECT TO A THERMAL-GRADIENT USING THE BOUNDARY-ELEMENT METHOD

The boundary element method is utilized in this study to conduct therm al analyses of functionally graded composites, materials in which the internal microstructure of properties are explicitly tailored in order to obtain an optimal response, on the micromechanical (constituent) s cale. A unique feature of the boundary element formulations used here is the use of circular shape functions to convert the two-dimensional integrations of the composite fibers to one-dimensional integrations. Using the computer code BEST-CMS, the through the thickness temperatur e profiles are computed for a representative material with varying num bers of fibers and fiber spacing in the thickness direction. The compu ted temperature profiles are compared to those obtained using an alter native analytical theory which explicitly couples the heterogeneous mi crostructure to the global analysis. The boundary element results comp ared favorably to the analytical calculations, with discrepancies that are explainable based on the boundary element formulation. The result s serve both to demonstrate the ability of the boundary element method to analyze these types of materials, and to verify the accuracy of th e analytical theory.