Elastoplastic and progressive failure analysis of fiber-reinforced composites via an efficient nonlinear microscale model

This paper presents numerical results concerning the nonlinear and failure analysis of fiber-reinforced composites. The micromechanical framework exploits a class of refined 1D models based on the Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF) having a variable kinematic description. The recently developed CUF micromechanics is a framework for the nonlinear modeling and exploits the ability of the CUF to predict accurate 3D stress fields with reduced computational overheads. The present formulation features the von Mises J2 theory for the pre-peak nonlinearity observed in matrix constituents, and the crack-band theory to capture the damage progression. Numerical examples and comparisons with results from literature assess the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed framework. The paper highlights the applicability of CUF models as an efficient micromechanical platform for nonlinear and progressive failure analysis for fiber-reinforced composites with potentially major advantages in the perspective of multiscale modeling.