Development of a numerical material model for axial crushing mechanical characterization of woven CFRP composites

Nowadays, the significant potential of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites in terms of weight to performance has contributed to their wide application in industrial fields. However, it is widely accepted that design of CFRP components remains rather challenging as laborious experimental work is usually required. Therefore, to reduce the cost and improve the CFRP product development efficiency, the present work aims to develop a numerical material model for numerical prediction of mechanical responses of composite structures under external loading. Both intralaminar and interlaminar failure mechanisms are taken into account with the aid of user material subroutine VUMAT and cohesive surface capability in Abaqus/Explicit. Particularly, a plasticity formulation, post-failure definitions including both continuum damage mechanics and progressive damage mechanics models, and smeared formulation accounting for mesh independence are all incorporated into the intralaminar material model. Finally, the model has been assessed by using two off-angle tension cases and axial crushing tests of corrugated specimen, and good agreement between experiment and simulation demonstrates that the proposed methodology can be used for mechanical characterization of woven composites under these loading cases.