REPRESENTATIVE VOLUME ELEMENT SIZE FOR ELASTIC COMPOSITES - A NUMERICAL STUDY

Monte Carlo (MC) runs are employed to generate statistically independe nt realizations of a periodic elastic composite with a disordered unit cell made up of 8, 27, and 64 nonoverlapping identical spheres. In th e limit of an infinite number of spheres in the disordered unit cell, this periodic composite obeys the Percus-Yevick hard-sphere statistics . By construction, the MC realizations studied have the same inclusion fraction. A constant-strain-tetrahedra displacement-based finite elem ent code with an iterative solver is used to calculate the overall ela stic constants of these periodic MC realizations. It appears that the scatter in the individual elastic constants already obtained with a fe w dozen spheres in the disordered unit cell is remarkably small and th e averages obtained with varying numbers of spheres are practically st ationary. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.