Thermal–mechanical cell model for unbalanced plain weave woven fabric composites

A high fidelity assessment of accumulative damage of woven fabric composite structures subjected to aggressive loadings is strongly reliant on the accurate characterization of the inherent multiscale microstructures and the underlying deformation phenomena. The stress and strain fields predicted at a global structural level are unable to determine the damage and failure mechanisms at the constituent level and the resulting stiffness degradation. To establish a mapping relation between the global and constituent response parameters, a new four-cell micromechanics model is developed for an unbalanced weave subjected to a thermal–mechanical loading. The developed four-cell micromechanics model not only bridges the material response from one length scale to another but also quantifies the composite thermal–mechanical properties at a given state of constituent damage. The thermal–mechanical mapping relations at different microstructural levels are derived based on the multicell homogenization, intercell compatibility conditions, and energy methods. Because of the high computational efficiency of the developed thermal–mechanical micromechanics model, it can be linked with a finite-element-based dynamic progressive failure model, where the response parameters at different microstructural levels can be extracted for each Gaussian point and at each time step. The accuracy and the dual function of the developed micromechanics model are demonstrated with its application to a balanced plain weave, an unbalanced plain weave, and failure mode simulation of a tensile coupon test.