Computation of Strength and Failure of Textile Composites in a Multiscale Simulation

Textile composites describe a broad range of polymer composite materials with textile reinforcements, from woven and non-crimp commodity fabrics to three dimensional textiles. In a general manner textile composites are based on textile preforms manufactured by some textile processing technique and on some resin infiltration and consolidation technique. Due to the complex three-dimensional structure of textile composites, experimental determination of strength parameters is not an easy procedure. Especially the through-thickness parameters are hardly to obtain. Therefore, in addition to real material testings, virtual material testings are performed by use of an information-passing multiscale approach. The multiscale approach consists of three scales and is based on computation of representative volume elements (RVE’s) on micro-, meso- and macroscale. The micromechanical RVE enables to determine stiffness and strength parameters of unidirectional fiber bundle material. Further, statistical distribution of fibers is investigated. The homogenized material parameters at microscale are used as input data for the next scale, the mesoscale. In the mesomechanical RVE, fiber architecture, in particular fiber undulations and the influence of through-thicknes