Stress concentration and effective stiffness of aligned fiber reinforced composite with anisotropic constituents

The paper addresses the problem of calculation of the local stress field and effective elastic properties of a unidirectional fiber reinforced composite with anisotropic constituents. For this aim, the representative unit cell approach has been utilized. The micro geometry of the composite is modeled by a periodic structure with a unit cell containing multiple circular fibers. The number of fibers is sufficient to account for the micro structure statistics of composite. A new method based on the multipole expansion technique is developed to obtain the exact series solution for the micro stress field. The method combines the principle of superposition, technique of complex potentials and some new results in the theory of special functions. A proper choice of potentials and new results for their series expansions allow one to reduce the boundary-value problem for the multiple-connected domain to an ordinary, well-posed set of linear algebraic equations. This reduction provides high numerical efficiency of the developed method. Exact expressions for the components of the effective stiffness tensor have been obtained by analytical averaging of the strain and stress fields.     

Micromechanisms and Mechanics of Damage and Fracture in Thin Film/Substrate Systems

The purpose of this paper is to review the mechanisms and available theoretical methods for modeling the strength and failure of thin film/substrate systems     

Elastic interaction of partially debonded circular inclusions. II. Application to fibrous composite

A complete analytical solution has been obtained of the elasticity problem for a plane containing periodically distributed, partially debonded circular inclusions, regarded as the representative unit cell model of fibrous composite with interface damage. The displacement solution is written in terms of periodic complex potentials and extends the approach recently developed by Kushch et al. (2010) to the cell type models. By analytical averaging the local strain and stress fields, the exact formulas for the effective transverse elastic moduli have been derived. A series of the test problems have been solved to check an accuracy and numerical efficiency of the method. An effect of interface crack density on the effective elastic moduli of periodic and random structure FRC with interface damage has been evaluated. The developed approach provides a detailed analysis of the progressive debonding phenomenon including the interface cracks cluster formation, overall stiffness reduction and damage-induced anisotropy of the effective elastic moduli of composite.     

在材料研制中的连续介质细观力学有限元建模现状评论（译文）

评述了机械载荷下材料力学行为有限元模拟的先进技术.分析 了考虑材料微观及细观结构情况下，对材料变形、损伤、断裂进行模 拟时各种方法的优缺点及发展前景.阐述了对材料行为模拟方法的发 展，包括基本的及先进的方法，如体胞方法、真实结构模拟、粘结区 模型等.分析了在先进新材料的开发中运用有限元方法的可能性     

Rain erosion of wind turbine blades: computational analysis of parameters controlling the surface degradation

Meccanica - Parameters influencing the erosion behavior of the leading edges of wind turbine blade tips are investigated. Recent enhancements in structural sizes of wind turbines operating at...     

Effect of crack orientation statistics on effective stiffness of mircocracked solid

This paper addresses the problem of calculating effective elastic properties of a solid containing multiple cracks with prescribed orientation statistics. To do so, the representative unit cell approach has been used. The microgeometry of a cracked solid is modeled by a periodic structure with a unit cell containing multiple cracks; a sufficient number is taken to account for the microstructure statistics. The developed method combines the superposition principle, the technique of complex potentials and certain new results in the theory of special functions. A proper choice of potentials provides reducing the boundary-value problem to an ordinary, well-posed set of linear algebraic equations. The exact finite form expression of the effective stiffness tensor has been obtained by analytical averaging the strain and stress fields. The convergence study has been performed; the statistically meaningful results obtained show dependence of the effective elastic stiffness on angular scattering of cracks. Comparison has been made with the selected simple micromechanical models, namely, non-interaction approximation, differential scheme and modified differential scheme. It is found that, among these models, the differential scheme provides the best fit of the numerical data.     

3D multiscale micromechanical model of wood: From annual rings to microfibrils

A 3D micromechanical analytical-computational model of softwood, which takes into account the wood microstructures at four scale levels, from microfibrils to annual rings, is developed. For the analysis of the effect of the annual rings structure on the properties of softwood, an improved rule-of-mixture model, based on 3D orthotropic stress–strain relations and taking into account the compatibility of deformations at the interface of two phases and equilibrium of tractions at phase boundaries, is proposed. The improved rule of mixture model (IRoM) was compared with the classical rule-of-mixture (RoM) and finite element method (FEM) simulations. It was shown that IRoM gives almost as good results as FEM. The analytical model of annual rings is combined with the 3D finite element model of softwood as cellular material with multilayered, microfibril reinforced cell walls, developed by Qing and Mishnaevsky, 2009a, Qing and Mishnaevsky, 2009b. Using the combined four-level model, the effect of wood density, microfibril angle (MFA) and cell shape angle (CSA) on the Young’s moduli, Poisson’s ratios and shrinkage properties of softwood has been investigated in numerical experiments. The simulations were verified by comparison with experimental data.     

Elastic interaction of partially debonded circular inclusions. I. Theoretical solution

A complete solution has been obtained of the elasticity problem for a plane containing a finite array of partially debonded circular inclusions, regarded as the open-crack model of fibrous composite with interface damage. A general displacement solution of the single-inclusion problem has been derived by combining the complex potentials technique with the newly derived series expansions. This solution is valid for any non-uniform far load and is finite and exact in the case of polynomial far field. Applying the superposition principle expands this theory to the multiple inclusion problem and provides a simple and rapidly convergent iterative algorithm. The presented numerical data show an accuracy and numerical efficiency of the proposed method and discover the way and extent to which the elastic interaction between the partially debonded inclusions affects the local fields, stress intensity factors and the energy release rate at the interface crack tips.     

3D FEA of Size Effects in Deformation of Thin Metallic Films

The purpose of this work is to analyze size effects in the deformation occurring during nanoindentation-tests of thin metallic films on ceramic substrates. It is well known that classical phenomenological theories of plasticity are hardly applicable in cases of very small dimensions of a body [1]. Thus, the dependency of the mechanical behavior of thin films on the thickness can not be studied in the framework of classical theories. In order to simulate numerically the deformation, a specific material model has been chosen which is able to account for size effects. It bases on the theory of ”Mechanism Strain Gradient” (MSG) plasticity [2] in conjunction with the deformation theory of plasticity. The material model has been implemented via the user defined element subroutine (UEL) in the commercial FE code ABAQUS/Standard as a ten-node tetrahedron-element. With the developed subroutine the deformation of thin copper films on Si substrates during nanoindentation-tests has been simulated. Different material models of the indentor (rigid and elastic) as well as different friction conditions between the film and the pyramidal indentor were tested. Furthermore, the influence of an additional oxide layer on the films surface has been analysed. In order to verify the numerical investigations, results from nanoindentation experiments have been used for comparison [4]. The FE simulations for different thicknesses in the range of 100-600nm showed a very good agreement with the experiments. In particular, the size dependency of the force-displacement curves, calculated by using the developed subroutine, is in rather good agreement with experiments. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Meso cell model of fiber reinforced composite: Interface stress statistics and debonding paths

The primary goal of this work is to develop an efficient analytical tool for the computer simulation of progressive damage in the fiber reinforced composite (FRC) materials and thus to provide the micro mechanics-based theoretical framework for a deeper insight into fatigue phenomena in them. An accurate solution has been obtained for the micro stress field in a meso cell model of fibrous composite. The developed method combines the superposition principle, Kolosov–Muskhelishvili’s technique of complex potentials and Fourier series expansion. By using the properly chosen periodic potentials, the primary boundary-value problem stated on the multiple-connected domain has been reduced to an ordinary, well-posed set of linear algebraic equations. The meso cell can include up to several hundred inclusions which is sufficient to account for the micro structure statistics of composite. The presented numerical examples demonstrate an accuracy and high numerical efficiency of the method which makes it to be a promising tool for studying progressive damage in FRCs. By averaging over a number of random structure realizations, the statistically meaningful results have been obtained for both the local stress and effective elastic moduli of disordered fibrous composite. A special attention has been paid to the interface stress statistics and the fiber debonding paths development, which appear to correlate well with the experimental observations.