Brittle to quasibrittle transition in a compound fiber bundle.

Abstract

The brittle to quasibrittle transition has been studied for a compound of two different kinds of fibrous materials, having distinct difference in their breaking strengths under the framework of the fiber bundle model. A random fiber bundle model has been devised with a bimodal distribution of the breaking strengths of the individual fibers. The bimodal distribution is assumed to consist of two symmetrically placed rectangular probability distributions of strengths p and 1-p, each of width d, and separated by a gap 2s. Different properties of the transition have been studied varying these three parameters and using the well-known equal load-sharing dynamics. Our study exhibits a brittle to quasibrittle transition at the critical width d_{c}(s,p)=p(1/2-s)/(1+p) confirmed by our numerical results.