Satoru Hirosawa

TL;DR: In this paper, the meso-scale finite element (FE) modeling of textile composites is considered as a powerful tool for homogenisation of mechanical properties, study of stress-strain fields inside the unit cell, determination of damage initiation conditions and sites and simulation of damage development and associated deterioration of the homogenised mechanical properties of the composite.

Abstract: Woven fabric composites with spread tow may induce better resin impregnation, mechanical properties, etc. than the conventional woven fabric composites. However, the mechanism of damage development of woven fabric composites with spread tow has not been investigated. To investigate the effect of spread tow on the damage development, the numerical simulation of the mechanical behavior is one of the effective procedures. We have developed a computer program based on damage mechanics. From the numerical results of mechanical behaviors under tensile loading for woven fabric composites with/without spread tow, it is revealed that the location of occurrence and the type of propagation of transverse cracks are quite different due to the effect of spread tow. Furthermore, we have prepared two numerical models with a distribution of volume fraction in a strand, and an effect of the volume fraction in a strand on the damage development has also been investigated. It has been recognized that the damage development inside lamina considering an effect of a spread tow, which has been never observed in experiments, can be predicted by the developed finite element analysis based on damage mechanics.

TL;DR: In this article, a numerical simulation program on damage development of composites based on damage mechanics is presented. And the results of multi-scale analysis of woven composites are described.