MICROMECHANICAL ANALYSIS OF FRP COMPOSITES

Abstract

Fiber reinforced composite materials are now an important class of an engineering materials. They offer outstanding mechanical properties, unique flexibility in design capabilities, and ease of fabrication. Additional advantages include light weight and corrosion resistance, impact resistance, and excellent fatigue strength. Today fiber composites are routinely used in such diverse applications as automobiles, aircraft, space vehicles, offshore structures, containers and piping, sporting goods, electronics, and appliances. In the present work, micromechanical behavior of a square unit cell of uni-directional fiber reinforced composite with orthotropic fibers (viz., Hexply Im7-8552, Kelvar and Carbon T300) embedded in epoxy resin has been analyzed under tensile loading using Finite element analysis software package Ansys 13.0. The 3-D Finite Element Model with governing boundary conditions has been developed from the unit cell of square pattern of the composite to evaluate the engineering constants like, Longitudinal modulus (E1), Transverse modulus (E2), In-plane shear modulus (G12) and Major Poisson’s ratio (ν12) of the above FRP composites for various fiber volume fractions. Also, interfacial stresses induced at the fibermatrix interfaces due to longitudinal loading for various fiber volume fractions has been estimated. Finally the results obtained from finite element analysis (Numerical method) are validated with benchmark results. The present work will be useful to predict the engineering constants of uni-directional fiber reinforced composite materials subjected to longitudinal loading.