FEM of carbon nanotube in resin

[yan.g]

Dear Jorgen,

I am pretty new to FEM, but want to try to simulate the behavior of carbon nanotubes reinforced resin. I read another thread about carbon fibre in resin, so can I do similar setup for nanotubes? is it possible? or I have to use bulk approximations for many nano-sized tube? Thanks.

The simulation would be very basic, tension, compression... to be compared with DMA data.

So my following questions are:
If I can use direct nanotube in resin, I plan use a solid (or a shell) with interconnected links inside. Do you have any suggestions to generate a lot of interconnected links in an efficient way?
Or I have to use bulk approximations? Or it is not even possible to simulate such different sized materials together?

Thanks a lot!
Yan

[Jorgen]

How are you planning to represent the nanotubes? I did not quite understand your description about the interconnected links.

How many nanotubes do you wan to model?
How long are your nanotubes?
How big computer do you have?

-Jorgen

[yan.g]

Dear Jorgen,

The nanotubes will be a tube/cylinder of 2nm diameter, ~100nm length. The interconnected structure can be assumed either like honeycomb or tetrahedron, and if I can compare with the randomly interconnected structure, it will be wonderful.

I have modelled severl cases with molecular simulations in liquid environment (not good for solid like resin), for example 250 tube in a 300nm cube or about 10000 tubes/um^3. (Yes that's quite dense!)
I have access to a supercomputer and a cluster (for parellel) server.

Yan

[Jorgen]

With that computer power you should be able to create a reasonable micromechanicsl model that is representing the composite structure. Often is it useful to use repeated boundary conditions in order to simulate an infinite medium.

Best of luck,
Jorgen