A Mechanistic Approach to Damage in Short-Fiber Composites Based on Micromechanical and Continuum Damage Mechanics Descriptions
A micro-macro mechanistic approach to matrix cracking in randomly oriented short-fiber composites is developed in this paper. At the micro-scale, the virgin and reduced elastic properties of the reference aligned fiber composite are determined using micromechanical models [1-5], and are then distributed over all possible orientations in order to compute the stiffness of the random fiber composite containing random matrix microcracks. After that the macroscopic response is obtained by means of a continuum damage mechanics formulation, which extends the thermodynamics based approach in [6] to randomly oriented short-fiber composites. Damage accumulations leading to initiation and propagation of a macroscopic crack are modeled using a vanishing element technique. The model is validated against the published experimental data and results [7]. Finally, its practical application is illustrated through the damage analysis of a random glass/epoxy composite plate containing a central hole and under tensile loading.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 902411
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-37945; CSTCEH; TRN: US200717%%198
- Journal Information:
- Composites Science and Technology, 64(5):607-617, Vol. 64, Issue 5; ISSN 0266-3538
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Prediction of Damage in Randomly Oriented Short-Fibre Composites by means of A Mechanistic Approach
Prediction of Damage in Randomly Oriented Short-Fibre Composites by means of A Mechanistic Approach