Computational Elastoplastic Modeling of Multi-phase Fiber-reinforced Composites

Abstract

The paper presents the development of a computational model to predict the overall elastoplastic behavior of n-phase fiber-reinforced composites. The micromechanics model used to predict the overall elastoplastic behavior of fiber composite is based on the Transformation Field Analysis (TFA) which allows the combination of various micromechanics models and plasticity models [1]. In the present work, the Eshelby-Mori-Tanaka model is used to predict the concentration factor of the composite medium [2]. Next, the overall governing TFA equations are integrated implicitly using the Governing Parameter Method (GPM) and the model is suited for analyzing a wide range of metal and polymer matrix composites [3]. The use of implicit integration on the TFA equations considerably reduces the computational cost. The reason of using implicit integration on integrating the TFA equations instead of explicit integration is not only the intrinsic advantages of implicit integration over explicit integration, more importantly, the use of explicit integration on integrating TFA equations will generate a system of 6 × n algebraic-differential equations for n-phase fibre composites for the von-Mises case. However, the implicit integration will only need to solve one nonlinear algebraic equation. This certainly reduces the computational cost of the analysis.