Modeling and Simulation of Failure in Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites

This chapter provides an overview of widely used computational approaches to fracture and their application in the failure modeling and simulation of fiber-reinforced polymer composite materials and structures. Cohesive elements, eXtended finite element method (XFEM) as discrete crack approaches, and phase field models as a continuous crack approach are described in detail. Emphasis is placed on the mathematical formulation and numerical implementation aspects of these computational fracture approaches. Proper microscopic boundary conditions in the context of multiscale modeling are reported. The covered computational fracture approaches are used to investigate the failure responses of fiber-reinforced polymer composites subjected to monotonic loading, with failure resolution at different characteristic length scales. The investigations confirm the potential and power of the continuous and discontinuous crack approaches in predicting the complex failure mechanisms in composite structures.