Phase field modelling of microscopic failure in composite laminates

Abstract

The previous study of the authors on a phase field method for modelling progressive failure in multi-phase materials is further extended in this study to capture microscopic failure processes in composite laminates. The auxiliary phase field model for the regularization of material interface is re-formulated. In the computational model, a small part of the model is built from microscopic length scale to explicitly consider the microstructure of the material while the other area is built from macroscopic length scale to improve the efficiency. Cohesive elements are employed to link the two mesh parts with different length scales and also to capture the intralaminar failure. The existing ABAQUS subroutine “UEL” has been rewritten for the present study due to the introduction of cohesive elements and a BFGS solver is used to improve the iteration stability. The thickness effect of a thin ply made laminate is considered and the crack suppression effect is investigated.

Experimental and numerical investigation of damage evolution in carbon fiber reinforced polymer stiffened panel in post-buckling regime

“…The extended finite element has allowed to model crack initiation and propagation along arbitrary paths. 25 The smeared crack method and more recently the phase field model has been employed for the modelling of various problems by diffusing surface crack into the volume, 26,27 nerveless the computational cost of these techniques restrict their application on microscopic and mesoscopic length scales problems. 28 The stress-based criterion approaches instead have attracted much attention.…”

Inverse determine the interfacial strength and surface geometry effects concerning carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composites by experiment aided FFT‐based spectral analysis

“…Song et al [ 3 ] provided a comparative and comprehensive investigation on the interfacial load transfer enhancement mechanism by MD simulation. Hu et al [ 30 ] developed an auxiliary phase field model to re‐formulated the regularization of fiber‐matrix interface for simulating progressive failure. For developing an analytical model in determining fiber/matrix interfacial strength, it is still challenging to consider all the interfacial physical and geometry features simultaneously due to the high computational cost and complex meshing.…”