A Numerical Method Charactering the Electromechanical Properties of Particle Reinforced Composite Based on Statistics

• Main Authors: Mengzhou Chang, Zhenqing Wang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-04-01
• Series: Polymers
• Subjects: polymer composite; electromechanical property; modeling and simulation; particle; statistics
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/10/4/426

A novel model for a network of polymer chains is proposed considering the distribution of polymer chains inside the composite in this work. Some factors that influence the distribution of polymer chains are quantitatively investigated, such as external surface geometry, internal filler, and local deformation. Furthermore, the Maxwell stress induced by an electric field is characterized by the statistics of local charge density, as the basic analyzing electromechanical properties of materials. In particular, taking the non-uniform distribution of polymer chains into account, the electromechanical properties of two materials—VHB 4910 and CaCu3Ti4O12-polydimethylsiloxane (CCTO-PDMS)—are investigated to validate the applicability of the proposed model. The comparison between simulation results and experimental results from existing literature shows that the model was successfully employed to predict the electromechanical properties of polymer composites.