THERMOELASTIC PROPERTIES AND CONDUCTIVITY OF COMPOSITES REINFORCED BY SPHERICALLY ANISOTROPIC PARTICLES

The present paper is concerned with the overall thermoelastic properties and conductivity of composites reinforced by spherically anisotropic particles. Based on the concept of the replacement particle an equivalent bulk modulus, thermal expansion coefficient and thermal conductivity are derived for the spherically anisotropic particle. Such equivalent properties can be employed in the micromechanical models to predict the overall behavior of the composite. In addition to these, the shear loading is considered. The effective shear modulus is evaluated on the basis of Mori and Tanaka's approximations and the dilute phase concentration factors are derived from exact solutions of an auxiliary boundary value problem.