Two-scale modeling of particle crack initiation and propagation in particle-reinforced composites by using microscale analysis based on Voronoi cell finite element model

In this study, a two-scale finite element model has been developed for the elastic analysis of composite materials. The coarse finite element mesh was assumed for the macroscale analysis, while Voronoi cell finite element model (VCFEM) was used for the microscale analysis of heterogeneous domains. The adaptive coupling between the two scales in non-critical and critical regions was accomplished through the master-slave nodes method. Two scale elements were connected together through the use of shared nodes and the order of the edge displacement interpolation. A new extended VCFEM was proposed to simulate particle damage generation, and a remeshing algorithm was constructed to simulate particle crack generation and propagation in particle-reinforced composites. For crack propagation analysis, four new combined Voronoi elements were developed and analyzed at the microscale. The obtained results for the stresses, stress intensity factors, and crack path were compared with those calculated using the commercial calculation software Abaqus. The two sets of results are in very good agreement, confirming the accuracy of the proposed method used for determining the stress concentrations and also for coarse-mesh discretization.