Prediction of the compressive damage response of flax-reinforced laminates using a mesoscale framework

Abstract

Compressive mechanical testing was performed on continuous fiber Flax/Epoxy laminate specimens, capturing, and quantifying its evolving in-plane plasticity and moduli. This non-linear behaviour was simulated using a modified continuum damage mechanics-based model. The standard Mesoscale Damage Theory (MDT) of Lade­ veze and Le Dantec was modified to include fiber-direction damage and plasticity evolution constitutive equa­tions in order to capture the non-linear behavior observed in Natural Fiber Composites (NFCs). The model parameters were experimentally identified and optimized. Validations have been performed on Flax/Epoxy laminates of various fiber orientations, as well as on E-Glass/Polyester using data from available literature. The proposed model successfully predicts the NFCs nonlinear compressive mechanical response. It is a robust pre­dictive tool to aid engineers and designers in the development of load-bearing biomaterial-reinforced composites.