Numerical homogenization for the simulation of composite materials: comparison with other micro mechanical formulations

F. OTERO; S. OLLER; X. MARTINEZ; O. SALOMON

New York

Congreso; 1st International Conference on Mechanics of Composites; 2014

This work presents a two-scale homogenization procedure to analyze composite structures taking into account their micro-structural behavior. This model is compared with other micro-structural formulations, micro models and the serial-parallel mixing theory, in terms of result accuracy and computational cost. The results of this comparison show that for linear analysis, the homogenization procedure proposed is an excellent alternative to the other formulations considered. Its computational cost is substantially lower than the one required by the micro-model and it is able to capture some microstructural phenomena that it is not recorded by the serial-parallel mixing theory. It will also be shown that the extension of the proposed model to the nonlinear range stills represents a major challenge due to its prohibitive computational cost, as it requires solving the representative volume element at each load step and at each gauss point. However a comparison with a micro-model show that this cost is in terms of CPU time but not in terms of memory. Therefore, based on the results obtained, it can be concluded that the homogenization method will become very competitive also for non-linear cases if it is coupled with a threshold criteria to decide whether it is necessary to analyze the RVE or not.