Application of Peridynamic Theory to Nanocomposite Materials

The purpose of this paper is to describe the computational procedure developed to apply the Bond-based Peridynamic Theory to nanocomposite materials. The goal is to predict the Young’s modulus as a function of the filling fraction of different nanocomposite materials with an accuracy better than that of other methods (like Halpin-Tsai, Mori-Tanaka, FEA models). A displacement control method is adopted here in order to simulate the incremental application of an external load. The constitutive law considered is linear and thus the problem can be seen as a static-linear problem. A description of the model and of the “multiscale approach” is given, supported by a comparison between experimental data and simulation results for different nanocomposites.