A Truly Generalized Plane Strain Meshless Model for Combined Normal and Shear Loading of Fiber Reinforced Materials

Abstract

A truly meshless method based on the integral form of equilibrium equations is formulated. A micromechanical model is developed to study micro-stresses in normal and shear loading of unidirectional fiber reinforced composites. A small repeating area of composite including a fiber surrounded by matrix called representative volume element (RVE) is considered as solution domain. A direct method is proposed for enforcement of the appropriate periodic boundary conditions for shear and normal loading. Especially transverse shear loading is considered in this analysis. Fully bonded interface condition is investigated and the continuity of displacements and traction is imposed to the fiber-matrix interface. Comparison of the predicted results shows excellent agreement with results in available literature. Results of this study also revealed that the presented model can provide highly accurate predictions with respectively small number of nodes and small computation time without the complexity of mesh generation.