Comparative analysis of methods for calculating the physico-mechanical characteristics of multi-layered composite materials

The paper presents a comparative analysis of methods and results of calculating the physical and mechanical characteristics of single-layered and multi-layered polymer composite materials (PCM). The object of the study is a polymer composite which consists of epoxy binder and carbon fiber reinforcements. The principle of multiscale modelling is applied to determine the physical and mechanical characteristics of the composite. Within the framework of this study, a representative volume element (RVE), the structure of which corresponds the characteristics of real materials, is used. The initial data for the calculation in this case are physical and mechanical characteristics of anisotropic fibers (carbon fabric) and an isotropic binder, as well as the geometric model of the RVE. As a result of the calculation, the effective characteristics of a quasi-homogeneous anisotropic material suitable for numerical analysis of the composite structures are determined. A comparison of the results of determining the physical and mechanical characteristics of the polymer composite using ANSYS Material Designer and MSC Digimat software packages for various size of RVE model is carried out and ANSYS Workbench software is also used to perform the stress-strain conditions of RVE model to determine the physico-mechanical characteristics of polymer composites