A model for damage in a clustered particulate composite

Previous models for the deformation of two-phase materials containing hard, brittle particles have been extended to allow the simultaneous treatment of damage and particle clustering. The model is based on a self-consistent analysis and uses an incremental, tangent modulus approach. Two problems are tackled. In the first we treat the effect of a distribution of particle sizes on damage development. We show that once the effect of the size …