1 The Virtues of Multicontinuum Mechanics for Composites Analysis

Accurate failure predictions of composite structures are often difficult to obtain given the diverse challenges encountered by the analyst. Meaningful analysis for composite structures must strike a balance between modelling damage occurring at the microscale and determining its effect at the macroscale. These divergent goals must also be accomplished in an efficient scheme that delivers significant results for the analyst. Efforts at Firehole Technologies toward predicting composite mechanics focus on efficiently crossing multiple geometric scales to use microstructural information for the prediction of composite material behavior. To begin, a finite element-based analysis is utilized to bring stress/strain resolution from the laminate level down to the individual lamina. Embedded in the lamina analysis is a multicontinuum theory algorithm that further decomposes lamina stress and strain fields down to fiber and matrix constituent level stress/strain fields. The idea of a multicontinuum is a new school of thought when considering the analysis of composites. The article presented here will focus on the virtues of multicontinuum mechanics as compared to the two common methods of analyzing composite lamina: continuum mechanics based methods, and micromechanics based methods. Nomenclature ε ~ Composite strain tensor