Multiscale approach to predict the effective elastic behavior of nanoparticle-reinforced polymer composites

A multiscale modeling scheme that addresses the influence of the nanoparticle size in nanocomposites consisting of nano-sized spherical particles embedded in a polymer matrix is presented. A micromechanics-based constitutive model for nanoparticle-reinforced polymer composites is derived by incorporating the Eshelby tensor considering the interface effects (Duan et al. 2005a) into the ensemble-volume average method (Ju and Chen 1994). A numerical investigation is carried out to validate the proposed micromechanics-based constitutive model, and a parametric study on the interface moduli is conducted to investigate the effect of interface moduli on the overall behavior of the composites. In addition, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are performed to determine the mechanical properties of the nanoparticles and polymer. Finally, the overall elastic moduli of the nanoparticle-reinforced polymer composites are estimated using the proposed multiscale approach combining the ensemble-volume average method and the MD simulation. The predictive capability of the proposed multiscale approach has been demonstrated through the multiscale numerical simulations