Micromechanical modeling of the microbond test to quantify the interfacial properties of fiber-reinforced composites

The present study has focused on achieving a micromechanical understanding of the microbond test, which involves pulling a fiber out of a bead of matrix (i.e. droplet) through a knife-edge, in order to quantify the interfacial fracture properties of fiber-reinforced composites. According to the microbond test results for carbon-fiber and epoxy-resin system, matrix cracking occurred during the fiber pullout, in addition to the debonding at the fiber-matrix interface. Therefore, in evaluating the fracture properties of the fiber-matrix interface, we should pay attention to the coupling effects of matrix failure and interfacial debonding on the test results. Then, we discuss how to best extract the interfacial properties while excluding the influence of matrix plasticity and cracking, using numerical simulations. The key mechanism demonstrated here is that the pullout force, in the cases where the influence of matrix cracking is negligible, appears as the upper limit among the experimental data of the pullout force for a constant initial embedded length of the fiber in the matrix. For this reason, the upper-limit data all over the range of embedded fiber length in experiments can be reasonably evaluated by the simulation focusing on the debonding process with matrix plasticity. This evaluation technique is effective as a way of extracting interfacial properties appropriately from microbond test results. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.