A Recipe for Composite Materials: An Approach through Fiber Bundle Model

Strengthening of materials and preventing abrupt fracture are really challenging jobs in the field of engineering and material science. Such problems can be resolved by using composite materials. In this work, we have studied the fracture process of a composite material in light of fiber bundle model with different elastic constants as well as different random threshold breaking strength of fibers. The critical width of the threshold distribution ($\delta_c$), for which abrupt failure occurs, is studied both analytically and numerically with increasing number of components $(k)$ in the composite and it is shown that $\delta_c$ is inversely related to $k$. Corresponding phase diagram for the model suggests decrease in the tendency of abrupt fracture as number of components in the composite increase.