A numerical simulation for effective elastic moduli of plates with various distributions and sizes of cracks

A fast convergent numerical model is developed to calculate the effective moduli of plates with various distributions and sizes of cracks, in which the crack line is divided into M parts to obtain the unknown traction on the crack line. When M=1, the model reduces to Kachanov's approximation method Int. J. Solids Struct. 23 (1987) 23]. Six types of crack distributions and three kinds of crack sizes are considered, which are four regular (equilateral triangle, equilateral hexagon, rectangle, and diamond) and two random distributions (random location and orientation, and parallel orientation and random location), and one, two and random crack sizes. Some typical examples are also analyzed using the finite element method (FEM) to validate the present model. Then, the effective moduli associated with the crack distributions and sizes are calculated in detail. The present results for the regular distributions show some very interesting phenomena that have not been revealed before. And for the two random distributions, as the effective moduli depend on samples due to the randomness, the effect of the sample size and number are analyzed first. Then, effective moduli for plates with the three sizes of cracks are calculated. It is found that the effect of crack sizes on the effective moduli is significant for high crack densities, and small for low crack densities, and the random crack size leads to the lowest effective moduli. The present numerical results are compared with several popular micromechanics models to determine which one can provide the optimum estimation of the effective moduli of cracked plates with general crack densities. Furthermore, some existing numerical results are analyzed and discussed.