A dual‐scale homogenization method to study the properties of chopped carbon fiber reinforced epoxy resin matrix composites. Issue 5 (19th March 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fu, Yuan; Zheng, Ping; Qiu, Yi Jian; Liu, Jin; Zhang, You Liang; Lu, Lei; Guo, Hui
• Is Part Of: Polymer composites. Volume 43:Issue 5(2022)
• Page Start: 2651
• Page End: 2671
• Publication Date: 2022-03-19
• Subjects: chopped carbon fiber -- directional modulus -- dual‐scale model -- homogenization method -- RVE; Polymeric composites -- Periodicals; 620.192
• DOI: 10.1002/pc.26564
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0272-8397

Abstract

Abstract: In this work, a dual‐scale homogenization (DSH) procedures including the representative volume element (RVE) and Unit cell (UC) with Halpin–Tsai models in the UC scale and space direction‐sensitive Hotelling expansion (SDSHE) models in RVE scale separately. These two methods are introduced and implemented to predict the response of effective elastic properties in chopped fiber reinforced epoxy matrix structures. A post‐processing scheme of subdomain in UC scale based on Gauss theorem is proposed in SDSHE method, which is used to extract the average strain and stress in UC three‐dimensional structure. In addition, the X‐ray computed tomography was used to determine the fourth order tensor orientation angle and the probability distribution information of chopped fiber length in testing samples. Homogenization properties in RVE scale, and inclusion volume fraction (VF), thickness of interface and orientation tensors are designed in UC scale and compared. The excellent correlations with experiments prove the effectiveness of the proposed models. Furthermore, the algorithm proposed in this paper realizes the homogenization of the two scales in the process of numerical analysis, and it will effectively take into account many problems that cannot be achieved by other algorithms, such as the path strain of the model, the thickness of the interface, and so on. Abstract : Schematic plot of Dual‐scale homogenization