INTEGRATED COMPUTATIONAL MATERIAL SCIENCE ENGINEERING LIFING MODEL OF CMC COUPONS USING NANO-MICROMECHANICS BASED MULTISCALE PROGRESSIVE FAILURE ANALYSIS

Abstract

The overall objective of this effort was to provide theoretical prediction for damage development for a set of laminated composites using AlphaSTAR Technology Solutions' (ATS's) commercial code GENOA (GENeral Optimization Analyzer) for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) program entitled "Assessment of Damage Progression Models for SiC/SiC Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMC Lifing Program)." Damage progression and prediction for advance ceramic matrix composite (CMC) benchmarks were done under static, fatigue, and creep service loading using test data from AFRL. Emerging and innovative multiscale (MS) modeling using computational structural mechanics (CSM) and progressive failure analysis (PFA) were proven to address the Air Force's vision to perform predictive evaluation of CMC materials using a building block validation strategy and certification process. Two different material systems and multiple layups were tested for both unnotched and notched configurations and at elevated temperatures. Calibration of the fiber and matrix properties was performed using in plane test data. The static, fatigue, and creep recalibration simulations of strength showed an average error of less than 10% between the simulation and test data. For stiffness the percent difference was found to be within 10% on average as well. All simulations used the same set of inputs (constituents, voids, fiber/matrix interphase, microcrack density, etc.) except for the noted analysis setting differences between blind and recalibration simulations. The method is consistent and follows a building block simulation approach that has an advanced yet simplistic theoretical multiscale progressive failure analysis (MS-PFA) approach.