A micromechanics-based mesomodel for unidirectional laminates in compression up to failure

Abstract

This study introduces an enriched description of a mesomodel for laminates in compression. The improvements are based on previous micromechanical studies regarding failure by kinking under combined compression and shear. The homogenization of the micromechanical response is based on an equivalence in recoverable, stored, and dissipated energy. This leads to a modified constitutive relation at the mesoscale which is probabilistic, i.e., parametrized by a measure of the statistical fiber misalignment, and features a nonlinear elastic potential in compression. The identification procedure is precisely detailed and applied on a T300/BSL-914C UD ply. It is shown that, thanks to simple deterministic relations, the mesoscale constitutive behavior is able to closely represent the homogenized ply's response of the underlying microstructure.