MODELING OF RANDOM FIBER COMPOSITES FOR ENERGY ABSORPTION

A computational approach to simulate the crushing behavior of random fiber composites is presented. Material damages induced by fiber debonding and crack nucleation and growth are considered. Systematic computational algorithms are developed to combine micromechanics and continuum mechanics based damage models into the constitutive relation. Based on the computational algorithms, crushing behavior of composite tube is simulated, which shows the applicability of the proposed computational tool for crashworthiness simulations