The sequential addition and migration method to generate representative volume elements for the homogenization of short fiber reinforced plastics

We present an algorithm for generating volume elements of short fiber reinforced plastic microstructures for prescribed fourth order fiber orientation tensor, fiber aspect ratio and solid volume fraction. The algorithm inserts fibers randomly into an existing microstructure, and removes the resulting overlap systematically based on a gradient descent method. In contrast to existing methods, large fiber aspect ratios (up to 150) and large volume fractions (60 vol% for isotropic orientation and aspect ratio of 33) can be reached. We study the effective linear elastic properties of the resulting microstructures, depending on fiber orientation, volume fraction as well as aspect ratio, and examine the size of a corresponding representative volume element.