On the generation of RVE-based models of composites reinforced with long fibres or spherical particles

An algorithm to create random distributions of uniform spherical or circular particles is proposed here with the aim of generating RVE-based micro-mechanical models for composites reinforced with long fibres or spherical particles. The algorithm is fast, able to represent the randomness of the material and to generate RVEs with any volume fraction, from 0 to its highest theoretical value, i.e. π32≈0.74 and π36≈0.91 for spheres and circles, respectively. Several statistical spatial descriptors were used to evaluate the goodness of the generated particles' distributions. It was concluded that the proposed algorithm can be used to generate statistically representative distributions of uniform particles.