Biography
Biography: Lu-Wen Zhang
Abstract
Understanding the mechanical behavior of nanocomposites and materials remains one of the most difficult challenges in the field of material science. In this talk, we will present a multi-scale framework for computational modeling of the mechanical behavior of carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforced cement composites. The geometry of a cylindrical representative volume element (RVE) of composites is considered in which the CNT and matrix are used as elastic continua. In a macroscopic scale treatment, reinforcement is assumed to be embedded in the overall domain in the corresponding volume fraction. Accounting for the volume fraction, orientation and arrangement of the reinforcing components, CNTs and a matrix are simulated by different nonlinear constitutive models to represent the composites; CNTs are considered as one-dimensional and distributed in a uniform orientation. A mesoscopic scale description is considered in order to depict the mesostructured morphology of the reinforced composites and the bond-slip of its mutual interaction. Two length-scale systems of equations are coupled together using a staggered technique and the modified Newton-Raphson method is adopted to solve the nonlinear system equations in order to track the full load-displacement path of the composites. Several carefully selected case studies and benchmark problems will be presented in the talk.