Progressive damage analysis of 3D braided composites using FFT-based method

Spectral method based on Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) is developed to study the mechanical properties of three-dimensional (3D) braided composites with complex internal microstructures. The FFT-based method can calculate the material properties by directly using real microstructure images, which could avoid conformal meshing geometry and assembling stiffness matrix similar as FEM. Combing with damage model, the FFT-based method is used to study the progressive damage of the braided composites. The strength and dominated failure modes of the braided composites obtained by the FFT-based method are also verified by the experimental results. Due to the high computation efficiency, the FFT-based method also has a great potential to be used in multi-scale computation analysis for textile composites.