NUMERICAL EFFECTIVE MEDIUM THEORY CALCULATIONS OF THE YOUNG’s MODULUS OF RANDOMLY ORIENTED FIBRE COMPOSITES

Numerical calculation of the elastic engineering constants of unidirectional fibre composites based on an effective medium theory (EMT)^[4] is here employed to find the Young's modulus of 2-dimensional as well as 3-dimensional randomly oriented fibre composites by a method of geometrical average over orientations due to Christensen & Waals^[3].The results compare faverably with similar calculations based on theories of Halpin-Tsai^[8] and Christensen^[7],and show good conformity with experimental data.Thus it is shown that EMT is applicable to the calculation of elastic properties of randomly oriented fibre composites.