Multi-scale characterisation of material properties of composite fabrics through modal tests

Abstract

One of the main issues of composite materials is related to the difficulty of characterising the material properties at mesoscopic and microscopic scales. Classical mechanical tests are not able to provide the full set of 3D properties : these tests can provide only the in-plane elastic properties of the constitutive lamina. Therefore, to go beyond the main restrictions imposed by standard destructive tests, this work deals with the problem of characterising the material properties of a multilayer composite plate, through a non-destructive modal test performed at the macro-scale : a multi-scale identification strategy (MSIS) is proposed. The MSIS aims at identifying the constitutive properties by exploiting the information restrained in the composite macroscopic dynamical response. The MSIS relies on the strain energy homogenisation technique of periodic media and on a gradient-based algorithm to perform the solution search. The identification problem is stated as a constrained inverse problem, where the objective function depends upon both experimental and numerical natural frequencies of the specimen. In this background, the optimisation variables are both geometrical and material properties of the constitutive phases composing the representative volume element. The effectiveness of the approach will be proven through a campaign of tests conducted on multilayer composites.