A novel mesoscopic progressive damage model for 3D angle-interlock woven composites

In this paper, a novel mesoscopic progressive damage model is proposed to investigate the effective properties and damage mechanisms of 3D angle-interlock woven composites. The damage activation is based on the three-dimensional version of Puck criterion. Given that there may be multiple cracks in the transverse direction of the fiber yams, a set of fracture angle-dependent damage variables are introduced to eliminate the stress abnormal phenomenon. In addition, an innovative exponential damage evolvement scheme, based on the equivalent displacement and stress, characteristic element length and fracture toughness, is proposed to govern the damage variables. Furthermore, a representative mesoscopic volume cell model, accounting for the fluctuation, distortion and actual cross-section size of fiber yams, is constructed to represent the realistic interlaced architecture of the woven composites. The anisotropic damage model is applied to investigate the failure behavior of the 3D woven composites subjected to uniaxial tensile loading along the warp and weft directions. Some typical quasi-static tension experiments are performed to validate the accuracy of the simulations. The numerical predictions including failure strength and damage accumulation process are coincident with the corresponding experimental results.