Elastic behavior of composites containing multi-layer coated particles with imperfect interface bonding conditions and application to size effects and mismatch in these composites

Abstract This paper proposes a procedure to deal with n-layered inclusion based composites with imperfect interfaces (which conditions consist of displacement or stress vector jumps) respecting spherical symmetry. For that purpose, “discontinuity matrices” have been introduced. These matrices have been derived for several classical interface-models and an asymptotic method has been used to determine some of them. A self-consistent condition based on a strain-energy equivalence in the case of inclusion-matrix type composite materials is restated for n-layered inclusions with imperfect interfaces and applied to get estimates of such composites materials. The remarkable feature of the presently self consistent approach is that it does not need any tedious algebra providing the attached interface models respect the spherical symmetry. The present Generalized Self Consistent Model (GSCM) is then used to study size effects and mismatch in composites reinforced by coated inclusions.