Analysis of local thermomechanical effects in fiber-reinforced periodic composites

Two approaches are combined to investigate the effect of localized thermo-mechanical loadings of periodic multiphase materials. The first one, referred to as the representative cell method, reduces the infinite domain problem to a problem for the periodicity cell by means of the discrete Fourier transform. This problem is solved by the discretization of the cell into several subcells and a second order expansion of the displacements transform vector in terms of local coordinates. Results for boron/epoxy and glass/epoxy composites subjected to localized mechanical and thermal loadings are presented, and they are compared with analytical solutions for homogeneous materials.