Modeling geometry and progressive interfacial damage in textile composites

A procedure combining geometrically nonlinear, explicit dynamic contact analysis, computer-aided-design techniques, elasticity-based mesh deformation, and cohesive contact modeling is proposed to efficiently construct practical finite element models for meso-mechanical analysis of progressive damage in textile composites. In the procedure, the geometry of the fiber tows is computed by imposing a fictitious expansion on the tows. Meshes resulting from the procedure are incongruent at the computed tow-tow and tow-matrix interfaces. The interfaces are treated as cohesive contact surfaces not only to resolve the incongruence but also to simulate progressive interfacial damage. Example meshes are constructed for two plain weaves, a ceramic-matrix composite with matrix porosity and a polymeric-matrix composite without porosity. To verify the meshes and interfaces, the composite models are simplified to only have interfacial damage in numerical experiments of uniaxial cyclic loading. Although the computed progression of damage is rather complex, anticipated major qualitative characteristics are reproduced in the computations.