Multiscale Analysis of Mechanical Properties of 3D Orthogonal Woven Composites with Randomly Distributed Voids.

Yaohua Gong,Tao Huang,Shuyi Zhao,Yongyong Suo,Xun’An Zhang,Purong Jia

doi:10.3390/ma14185247

Yaohua Gong, Tao Huang + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14185247

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Abstract

Voids are common defects in 3D woven composites because of the complicated manufacturing processes of the composites. In this study, a micro–meso multiscale analysis was conducted to evaluate the influence of voids on the mechanical properties of three-dimensional orthogonal woven composites. Statistical analysis was implemented to calculate the outputs of models under the different scales. A method is proposed to generate the reasonable mechanical properties of the microscale models considering randomly distributed voids and fiber filaments. The distributions of the generated properties agree well with the calculated results. These properties were utilized as inputs for the mesoscale models, in which void defects were also considered. The effects of these defects were calculated and investigated. The results indicate that tensile and shear strengths were more sensitive to the microscale voids, while the compressive strength was more influenced by mesoscale voids. The results of this study can provide a design basis for evaluating the quality of 3D woven composites with void defects.

Highlights

The past few decades have witnessed significant advances in the application of 3D woven composites owing to their superior mechanical properties, such as high specific stiffness/strength, high damage tolerance and high energy absorption capability [1,2,3]
A higher stress concentration occurs between two adjacent fiber filaments in the load direction, at which the matrix elements will be damaged compared with the void-free case
It should be noted when the Gaussian distribution is implemented in mesoscale model, the generated values should be in the minimum-maximum range, obtained from finite element simulations, in order to avoid the appearance of too large or too small values

Summary

Introduction

The past few decades have witnessed significant advances in the application of 3D woven composites owing to their superior mechanical properties, such as high specific stiffness/strength, high damage tolerance and high energy absorption capability [1,2,3]. The wide and extended use of these composites requires higher mechanical property standards. Defects such as voids in the matrix are almost inevitable during the molding process because of the complex spatial structure of the woven composite. The randomly distributed fiber filaments in microscale models significantly influence the mechanical performance of composites [7]. This paper presents a micro–mesoscale analysis to evaluate the influence of randomly distributed voids on the mechanical behaviors of three-dimensional orthogonal woven composites (3DOWCs), considering randomly distributed fiber filaments in bundles

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