Soft and hard anisotropic interface in composite materials

For a large class of composites, the adhesion at the fiber-matrix interface is imperfect i.e. the continuity conditions for displacements and often for stresses is not satisfied. In the present contribution, effective elastic moduli for this kind of composites are obtained by means of the Asymptotic Homogenization Method (AHM). Interaction between fiber and matrix is considered for linear elastic fibrous composites with parallelogram periodic cell. In this case, the contrast or jump in the displacements on the boundary of each phase is proportional to the corresponding component of the tension on the interface. A general anisotropic behavior of the interphase is assumed and the interface stiffnesses are explicitly given in terms of the elastic constants of the interphase. The constituents of the composites exhibit transversely isotropic properties. A doubly periodic parallelogram array of cylindrical inclusions is considered. Comparisons with theoretical and experimental results verified that the present model is efficient for the analysis of composites with presence of imperfect interface and parallelogram cell. The present method can provide benchmark results for other numerical and approximate methods.