Effective stress-strain, thermophysical and electrophysical properties of filled polymer composites

In this paper, an approach to solving the problem of the determination of effective stress-strain, thermophysical and electrophysical properties of filled composite materials on the basis of the variational principles is developed. In the numerical implementation, it might be reduced to the use of the finite element method (FEM). An approach, possessing a certain generality, to finding effective physical-mechanical, thermophysical and electrophysical properties of filled polymer composites is proposed and described. Firstly, a general concept based on obtaining detailed parameters of the composite state under external impact taking into account the actual structure of the material is developed. Then, the averaging procedure aimed at obtaining effective properties of the composites is employed. Secondly, the realization of boundary problems is reduced, for all cases (physical-mechanical, thermophysical and electrophysical), to the formulation of the corresponding variable principles and their realization by the methods of computational mechanics, in particular, by the finite element method.