# Estimating the Effective Elasticity Properties of a Diamond/$\beta$-SiC Composite Thin Film by 3D Reconstruction and Numerical Homogenization

## TL;DR

This study estimates the effective elastic properties of a diamond/$\beta$-SiC composite thin film using 3D reconstruction and numerical homogenization, despite limited micrograph data, revealing transverse isotropy in the material.

## Contribution

It introduces a method to determine elastic properties of a composite thin film from sparse micrograph data using 3D reconstruction and symmetry-based optimization.

## Key findings

- The composite exhibits transverse isotropy.
- Six independent elastic parameters are identified.
- Numerical homogenization effectively estimates properties from limited data.

## Abstract

The main aim of the present work is to estimate the effective elastic stiffnesses of a two-phase diamond/$\beta$-SiC composite thin film that is fabricated by chemical vapor deposition. The parameters of linear elasticity are determined by numerical homogenization. The database is sparse since for the 3D volume of interest only two micrographs displaying the phase distributions in perpendicular planes are available; micrographs each of a cross-section and the surface of the thin film. A representative volume element (RVE) is reconstructed by an optimization software and by means of identified material symmetries in 2D of the specimen. The elastic homogenization results indicate that the two-phase diamond/$\beta$-SiC composite exhibits the behavior of transverse isotropy, for which the set of six independent material parameters is identified.