A continuum constitutive model for the simulation of fabric-reinforced composites

Fibre-reinforced polymer-based composite materials fail due to a wide variety of interacting damage mechanisms, which require complex constitutive models in order to develop Finite Element (FE) predictive analysis. In this paper, a constitutive behaviour model based on Continuum Damage Mechanics (CDM) is proposed for the simulation of fabric-reinforced composites. The model uses simplified loading functions in order to minimise the computational time required to obtain the numerical solution. To reduce the influence of mesh refinement on the numerical solutions, the Crack Band Model (CBM) algorithm is implemented. In this way, the energy dissipated at each point in the material is regularized for the different damage mechanisms. This newly-formulated constitutive model is implemented by means of a user-defined material subroutine in Abaqus/Explicit FE code. The model is validated by comparing the results of FE predictions with experimental data from open hole specimens, under quasi-static tensile loading conditions. A good correlation between the numerical and experimental results is achieved when using a bilinear cohesive law, for different combinations of hole diameter and specimen width.