A Comparative Study of Micromechanical Models for Inelastic Composite Materials

Micromechanical models bed on the Mori-Tanaka mean field theory are studied in detail for predicting the tensile and cyclic behaviors of composite materials. The validity of the models is discussed in the light of the results of comparison with the experiments. The anisotropic tangent moduli method gives satisfactory predictions both for the tensile and cyclic hardening of the composites, and the isotrpic tangent moduli method and secant moduli mechod are suitable for the tensile hardening predictions, the elastic conshaint model seems to give overestimates for both situations in hardening.