Three-scale bridging for woven composites using homogenization techniques

Abstract

Woven composites have a multiscale character, whose structural response is affected by mechanisms on different lower scales. The predicted macroscopic response of a carbon fiber reinforced woven composite is achieved by model order reduction and homogenization techniques, taking into account the structures and mechanisms on both mesoscopic and microscopic scales. Reduced order models based on piecewise uniform fields and mean field homogenization are integrated for the micro-meso-macro upscaling to finally determine the effective macroscopic response of a woven unit cell. A spatial decomposition for the woven composite unit cell on the mesoscale is implemented, achieving the model order reduction by taking into account the local microstructure of the yarns as well as inelastic fields emerging under selected deformation conditions. Following, different numerical tests are performed on the woven unit cell, containing complex and inelastic loading histories. Macroscopic homogenized predictions following the reduced order models and full-field direct numerical simulations are compared. Very high accuracies are achieved by the employed reduced order models, allowing for great computational savings.