Fiber neutrality in fiber-reinforced composites: Evidence from a computational study

We report numerical evidence for neutrality of thin fibers to a prescribed uniform stress field in a fiber-reinforced composite. Elastic finite element analyses of fiber-reinforced composites are carried out with a conventional fully-resolved model and a novel dimensionally-reduced fiber model.The two modeling approaches are compared in the analysis of mechanical properties and matrix-fiber slip profiles. An analysis of the effectiveness of various fiber orientations with respect to the loading direction shows that the notion of inclusion neutrality, originally formulated for rigid line inclusions by Wang et al. [Journal of Applied Mechanics, 52(4), 814–822, 1985], holds also for linear elastic thin fibers with imperfect interface