Multi-scale damage framework for textile composites: Application to plain woven composite

Abstract

A damage mechanics-based progressive damage analysis (PDA) of plain woven textile composite (PWTC) is performed in this work. The primary objective is to identify the micro-scale and meso-scale failure modes, and compute the ultimate strength of PWTC under in-plane loadings. Multi-scale PDA is performed on an equivalent cross-ply laminate (ECPL) model by maximum stress theory to predict the meso-scale failure modes of PWTC. The damaged stiffness is computed by 3 different ways: 1) hypothesis of strain energy equivalence by proposed 4th order anisotropic damage tensor, 2) applying isotropic damage law, and 3) eliminating the stiffness terms. Novel multi-scale PDA approaches, applying Mori-Tanaka (MT) theory on ECPL model and on the quarter portion of representative volume element of PWTC, are performed to predict micro-scale failure modes. The macro-scale constitutive behaviour of PWTC is theoretically predicted and the corresponding strengths are computed. A user material (UMAT) subroutine is developed to validate the proposed constitutive behaviour of PWTC solving macro-scale boundary value problems in ABAQUS®. The PDA simulation results of 3D PWTC bar model are found to be reasonably matching with the in-house experiments.