MESOMECHANICS OF MEDIUM DENSITY PAPER

A two-dimensional mesoelement model that incorporates all of the in-plane stretch and shear component and effect of inter-fiber bonding, has been developed in this study for the first time using the Finite Element Method. The results reflect sheet elastic constants. In addition, this work studies spatial variation in stress and strain in the fiber. Such a detailed study of stress- strain for a fiber mesoelement has never been conducted in such a small scale. This work studies the effect of sheet Poisson ratio on the strain energy of the fiber. Dimensionless elastic modulus and Poisson ratio values obtained in this study are in between theoretical upper and lower bound- reported already in two well established models i.e. Cox model and Page-Schulgasser model. The current model study is a transition between these two theoretical extremes, and is good for medium to high-density paper.