Investigation of the mechanical properties of Mo-reinforced glass-matrix composites

One approach for reducing the inherent brittleness and flaw sensitivity of glass is to fabricate a composite material by incorporating particles or fibers in the glass matrix. In order to fully understand the toughening mechanisms in composites, it is useful to develop predictive models able to describe the mechanical behavior and its dependence on microstructure. To this aim, numerical models can be used in order to assess the effect of the glass-matrix composite microstructure on the effective macroscopic mechanical and fracture properties. An innovative microstructure-based finite element code is used to describe the mechanical performance of glass matrix composites. This code is able to convert digitized images of the material microstructure into a finite element grid, so that all microstructural details such as inclusion size, morphology and volume fraction can be incorporated in the model. In this study, a borosilicate glass matrix composite reinforced with molybdenum particles is characterized using the aforementioned microstructure-based FEM approach in terms of residual stresses and elastic properties.