Thermo-mechanical damage modeling of polymer matrix sandwich composites in fire

The objective of this research is to develop a modeling and simulation approach for predicting the thermo-mechanical damage of composite materials subjected to fire environments. A 3D thermal damage model is developed for glass-reinforced polymer composite materials subject to high temperature and radiative environments. Homogenization methods are used to formulate the damaged material in terms of fiber, resin and char. The thermal damage model is implemented in Abaqus via an overlaid element approach. The solution of the mechanical response uses the existing functions in Abaqus for large-displacement analysis. Composite sandwich panels with balsa core are examined. Reasonable agreement in temperature is obtained between predictions and available experimental data. For the sandwich panels, delamination failure is predicted at the sandwich interface - consistent with the experiments. Comparisons of time-to-failure of the sandwich panel show the predictions are reasonable. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.