Evaluating the mechanical behavior of 2D woven fabric composite by domain decomposition method

The domain decomposition method was proposed for the study of mechanical properties of 2D woven fabric composite (WFC) based on mesh superposition method. The domain decomposition method was different from traditional represent volume element method. Instead of modeling the fibre and matrix explicitly in traditional represent volume element method, domain decomposition method separately models the global domain and fibre domain, which can be easily discretized using the traditional solid element. Global domain was superimposed by fiber domain and matrix domain. The two domains were superimposed by coupling with multi-point constraints from commercial finite element package MSC. Nastran. The displacement function was established to simulate coupling between fibre domain and global domain by multi-point constraints. Domain decomposition method is easier to set up models of WFC than traditional represent volume element method. Numerical simulations show that the results predicted by domain decomposition method correlate very well with the experimental data. Otherwise, the tendency of mechanical properties under different fiber volume fraction of WFC was also investigated. With the increasing of fiber volume fraction, the moduli of WFC increases, while Poisson’s ratios decreases.