Review of strain rate effects of fiber-reinforced polymer composites

The application of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites is gaining increasing popu-larity in impact-resistant devices, automotives, biomedical devices and aircraft structures due to their high strength-to-weight ratios and their potential for impact energy absorption. Impact-induced high loading rates can result in significant changes of...

Modeling of dynamic mode I crack growth in glass fiber-reinforced polymer composites: fracture energy and failure mechanism

The mode-I dynamic fracture energy and failure mechanisms of glass fiber-reinforced polymer composites are investigated with an embedded cell model of the single-edge-notched-tension (SENT) geometry. Under an applied dynamic loading, a crack may propagate in the embedded microstructure, accompanied by the development of a fracture process...

A numerical homogenization scheme used for derivation of a homogenized viscoelastic-viscoplastic model for the transverse response of fiber-reinforced polymer composites

With a classical notched configuration, the damage process in the transverse plane of fiber-reinforced polymer composites are studied by a direct numerical simulation model (DNS). However, to avoid high computational costs the region in which the fiber/matrix microstructure is explicitly modeled must remain small. Therefore, away from the...

A dispersive homogenization model for composites and its RVE existence

An asymptotic homogenization model considering wave dispersion in composites is investigated. In this approach, the effect of the microstructure through heterogeneity-induced wave dispersion is characterised by an acceleration gradient term scaled by a “dispersion tensor”. This dispersion tensor is computed within a statistically equivalent...