Elastic waves in a fiber-reinforced composite

The propagation of time-harmonic elastic waves in a fiber-reinforced composite is studied. The circular fibers are assumed to be parallel to each other and randomly distributed with a statistically uniform distribution. The direction of propagation and the associated particle motion are considered to be normal to the fibers. It is shown that the average waves in the composite separate into compressional and shear types. General formulae for the complex wave number giving the phase velocity and the damping are obtained. It is shown that these formulae lead to the Hashin-Rosen expressions for the transverse bulk modulus and the lower bound for the transverse rigidity, if the correlation in the positions of the fibers can be ignored. The correlation terms, for exponential correlation, are shown to have a significant effect on the damping property of the composite, especially at high frequencies and concentrations.