Author:

Keywords:

0910 Manufacturing Engineering, 0912 Materials Engineering, 0913 Mechanical Engineering, Polymers, 4016 Materials engineering, 4017 Mechanical engineering

Abstract:

The need to develop computationally efficient thermomechanical models has emerged with the increased engineering of textile composite materials. A simple substructuring concept for solving the stress analysis problem of a general woven fabric composite has been developed using the complementary variational principle. A pictorial scheme for its application is presented. The computed microstress fields in the woven fabric composite, subjected to arbitrary combinations of applied macrostresses and temperature changes, are a useful tool in understanding and predicting the appearance of damage. Parametric studies showed a wide range of variability in the onset of first cell failure. A stiffness degradation scheme was adopted to predict the complete stress-strain curve and the final failure of the composite. Good correlation with experimental data was observed.