Finite element analysis of damaged woven fabric composite materials

Since fiber reinforced composite materials have been used in main parts of structures, an accurate evaluation of their mechanical characteristics becomes very important. Due to their anisotropic nature and complicated architecture, it is very difficult to reveal the damage mechanisms of these materials from the results of mechanical tests. Therefore, there is a need to conduct reliable simulations and analytical evaluations. In this paper, the damage behavior of FRP is simulated by finite element analysis using an anisotropic damage model based on damage mechanics. The proposed procedure is applied to an example; the finite element analysis of microscopic damage propagation in woven fabric composites. Experimental tests have been conducted to evaluate the validity of the proposed method. It is recognized that there is a good agreement between the computational and experimental results, and that the proposed simulation method is very useful for the evaluation of damage mechanisms. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.