Micromechanics-Based Technique of Material Homogenization and Determination of Fracture Plane in Advance Composites

Abstract

AbstractThis study presents a material homogenization technique using ABAQUS/CAE finite element modeling platform to obtain the effective material properties and determines possible fracture plane under transverse compression loading on a representative volume element (RVE) of randomly distributed fibers in the unidirectional composites. We have modeled four RVEs with the random distribution of fibers for the analysis. Hill’s concentration factor approach is used to determine the homogenized effective properties. The material properties obtained from the current approach are compared with the computational results obtained by Koley et al. (2019) and the experimental results of Soden et al. (1998). Results from the current micromechanics-based analysis have shown close agreement with the literature. In addition, the fracture plane angle is also studied by determining the weak plane of the matrix material of an RVE subjected to a transverse compression loading. This study uses weak planes of stress concentration factors in the RVE to find the fracture plane angle. Finally, the comparison is made with the results for similar RVE subjected to transverse compression loading provided in the literature. The fracture plane angles obtained in the analysis show that it depends on the local stacking of fibers, while the average fracture plane angles in the current analysis are consistent with the work of Puck and Schürmann (2002).KeywordsComposite laminateFracture planeHomogenizationMicromechanicsRepresentative volume element