Analytical and numerical evaluation of the effective properties of macro fiber composite (MFC)

The piezoelectric fibers of Macro Fiber Composite (MFC) have a rectangular cross-section with an aspect ratio of 2. This heterogeneity poses challenges for micromechanical modeling to predict the effective mechanical properties. The High-Fidelity Generalized Method of Cells (HFGMCs) is commonly used to calculate the properties of composite materials. In this paper, a Modified High-Fidelity Generalized Method of Cells (MHFGMC) is proposed to analyze MFC properties, in which the interaction between subcells is considered by defining the quadratic directional coupling term and the shear connection matrix. The accuracy of the proposed MHFGMC model is verified by using the finite element method and experimental tests. The results show that the MHFGMC can accurately predict the effective mechanical properties of MFC, and the relative error of tensile properties compared to experimental results is within 2.29%. The MHFGMC significantly improve the accuracy of the HFGMC, the relative error of its shear modulus is decreased from 105.13% to 0.71%.