Complex interactions in fiber-reinforced composites between multiple failure mechanisms have made accurate failure prediction a daunting challenge. One approach to better identify failure mechanisms has been the use of volume average constituent stresses in the composite to predict the onset and outcome of failure in individual constituents. However, this approach was shown here to not conserve strain energy in the composite, which could potentially affect the accuracy of failure prediction under certain loading conditions. The focus of this work was to develop an expression for the discrepancy in strain energy, termed the interaction energy, and to numerically evaluate the influence of constituent properties, fiber volume fraction, and load combinations on the magnitude of this energy. The simulation results showed that interaction energy accounts for nearly 30% of the total strain energy in the composite for certain loading conditions in typical aerospace-grade carbon-epoxy composites, suggesting that existing constituent-based failure theories might be enhanced by incorporation of this energy into failure criteria.


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    Title :

    Composite Interaction Energy and Constituent Average Stresses for Predicting Composite Failure


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    AIAA Journal ; 52 , 11 ; 2455-2461


    Publication date :

    2014-11-01




    Type of media :

    Conference paper , Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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