Micro-mechanical damage simulation of filament-wound composite with various winding angle under multi-axial loading

Abstract

With the application of Filament Wound Composites (FWC) in the market, the general model for composites with different process parameters is urgently needed. In this paper, a generalized full-scale 3D finite element model (FEM) is established considering the fluctuation and lamination characteristics of FWC fiber arrangement. The Generalized Method of Cell (GMC) is embedded into the commercial FEM code of ANSYS as user-defined subroutine (UMAT) to obtain the micromechanics of the component materials and the macro-structural scale and the micro-structural scale are thus linked. For the damage analysis, three different failure criteria are used to explore the failure process of materials under different loads. The comparison of the predicted results with the experimental results shows that the simulation method can reflect the progressive damage of FWC under different loading conditions well. Furthermore, the effects of the winding angle on the mechanical properties of FWC under different loads are also investigated. The results show that the modulus and strength of the material decrease as the angle increases under pure tensile loading, and both the modulus and strength reach the maximum when the winding angle is 45 under torsional loading. Under tensile-torsional loading, the maximum strength value of the material is related to the tensile-torsional stress ratio.