A numerical approximation to the elastic properties of sphere-reinforced composites

Three-dimensional cubic unit cells containing 30 non-overlapping identical spheres randomly distributed were generated using a new, modified random sequential adsortion algorithm suitable for particle volume fractions of up to 50%. The elastic constants of the ensemble of spheres embedded in a continuous and isotropic elastic matrix were computed through the finite element analysis of the three-dimensional periodic unit cells, whose size was chosen as a compromise between the minimum size required to obtain accurate results in the statistical sense and the maximum one imposed by the computational cost. Three types of materials were studied: rigid spheres and spherical voids in an elastic matrix and a typical composite made up of glass spheres in an epoxy resin. The moduli obtained for different unit cells showed very little scatter, and the average values obtained from the analysis of four unit cells could be considered very close to the “exact” solution to the problem, in agreement with the results of Drugan and Willis (J. Mech. Phys. Solids 44 (1996) 497) referring to the size of the representative volume element for elastic composites. They were used to assess the accuracy of three classical analytical models: the Mori–Tanaka mean-field analysis, the generalized self-consistent method, and Torquato's third-order approximation.