Multiscale progressive failure analysis of textile composites

The experimental determination of stiffness and strength of textile composites is expensive and time-consuming. Experimental tests are only capable of delivering properties of a whole textile layer, because a decomposition is not possible. However, a textile layer, consisting of several fiber directions, has the drawback that it is likely to exhibit anisotropic material behavior. in the presented paper a finite element multiscale analysis is proposed that is able to predict material behavior of textile composites via virtual tests, solely from the (nonlinear) material behavior of epoxy resin and glass fibers, as well as the textile fiber architecture. With these virtual tests it is possible to make predictions for a single layer within a textile preform or for multiple textile layers at once. The nonlinear and pressure-dependent behavior of the materials covered in the multiscale analysis is modeled with novel material models developed for this purpose. In order to avoid mesh-dependent solutions in the finite-element simulations, regularization techniques are applied. The simulations are compared to experimental test results. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.