Modeling of self-healing composite materials

In this thesis modeling approaches have been considered to describe healing process in self-healing materials. These materials can partially restore their mechanical properties as microcracks develop inside the material. The interest in modeling of self-healing materials comes from recent experiments [1] that show possible perspective applications in many fields of industry. Following the idea of bio-materials that can heal its damaged parts, self-healing materials become an attractive alternative to existing methods of increasing lifetime of materials.;The first part presents general methods or approaches that can be used in description of self-healing materials. Depending on degree of detailed information of interest about material as well computer power one can choose appropriate model. Continuum effective-field modeling and lattice numerical simulations are presented in the the second part of the thesis. It is shown that presence of glue carrying capsules indeed reasonably increases lifetime of self-healing materials. The conductance of self-healing materials as a measure of the material integrity in the regime of the onset of the initial fatigue has been also explored. The results illustrate the general features of the self-healing process: the onset of the material fatigue is delayed, by developing a plateau-like time-dependence of the material quality. The model was studied in two and three dimentions and the results show similar qualitative behavior for the degradation and conductance of the material. It was demonstrated that in this low-damage regime, the changes in the conductance and similar transport/response properties of the material can be used as measures of the material quality degradation. A new feature of the competition between the healing cells that interfere with each other and reduce each other's healing efficiency was considered.