Material parameter identification of the elementary ply damage mesomodel using virtual micro-mechanical tests of a carbon fiber epoxy system

A general multiscale hierarchical framework is proposed to identify the material parameters of a mesoscale model using numerical simulations based on virtual micro-mechanical tests. The identification of the material parameters is usually done with several experiments on different laminates. These experiments are replaced by virtual tests on a microscale finite element model with the same load conditions than the real experiments. The microscale model represents the unidirectional ply geometry based on its constituents, fibers and matrix, with their corresponding properties and the damage behavior of the matrix and interface between them. Under the defined load conditions, the homogenized stress-strain behavior of the laminates is obtained and then, the constitutive model parameters of the ply damage mesomodel are identified. As an example, the proposed framework is applied to identify the material parameters of the elementary ply damage mesomodel developed at LMT-Cachan. It is shown that, when the materials, geometry and load conditions are correctly defined in the micromodel, the real experiments can be replaced by virtual tests. As a result, the amount of experiments can be reduced saving costs and time. In addition, further studies can use the proposed methodology based on virtual micro-mechanical tests to improve the current mesoscale models. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.