Peridynamic homogenization of microstructures with orthotropic constituents in a finite element framework

This study presents a peridynamic approach for performing homogenization of complex material microstructures by using the current element technology of ANSYS. The constituent materials can be orthotropic and arbitrary in number. The periodic boundary conditions are applied in a natural way without any constraint conditions. The construction of peridynamic governing equations and modeling procedure do not require any User Programmable Features (UPF) of ANSYS. The numerical results concern the verification of this approach by comparison with those reported in the literature, and its capability in the presence of matrix cracks and debonds along the fiber-matrix interface.