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Composites Science and Technology 67 (2007) 32783285
www.elsevier.com/locate/compscitech
a
Laboratoire de Mecanique de Lille (UMR CNRS 8107), USTL, PolytechLille, Avenue P. Langevin, 59655 Villeneuve dAscq Cedex, France
b
Laboratoire de Structure et Proprietes de lEtat Solide (UMR CNRS 8008), USTL, Batiment C6, 59655 Villeneuve dAscq Cedex, France
Received 13 October 2006; received in revised form 28 February 2007; accepted 28 March 2007
Available online 11 April 2007
Abstract
Videomeasurements were used to estimate the damage in chopped random glass ber polymermatrix composites. In order to predict
the overall mechanical behaviour, voiding evolution induced by ber debonding is incorporated into a micromechanics-based constitu-
tive model. The comparison between the experimental data and the numerical predictions shows a very good agreement.
2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
0266-3538/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.compscitech.2007.03.031
A. Bouaziz et al. / Composites Science and Technology 67 (2007) 32783285 3279
2.1. Material
The composite under study consists of randomly ori- Fig. 1. Specimen dimensions (in mm) and conguration of the seven
markers for strains measurement.
ented chopped (E-glass) bers embedded in an unsaturated
polyester matrix. The material was fabricated by compres-
sion molding at room temperature from mat densities of
300 and 450 g/m2. Each ber is constituted by a bundle load
interface
of 50 laments of about 10 lm in diameter and 50 mm in
length. The bers, randomly distributed in the plane of
the material, exhibit an aspect ratio a of about 100. The load
cell
ber volume fraction, obtained by burning o the polyester
matrix, is found to be 13% and 21%. For convenience in videotraction
marked
the remaining of the paper, the glass ber reinforced poly- sample workstation
video
ester (GFRP) composites are coded as follows: GFRP-21R white neon
camera
and GFRP-13R for the 21% and 13% ber volume frac- light
tions, respectively.
disposed along the axis 1. The partial axial strains are given 2,5E-05 5,E-05
by:
AB A0 B0 2,0E-05 4,E-05
E11 AB
A0 B0
60 0.009
are localised around the bers. The origin of these voids
is attributed to the interfacial damage which seems to be
stress (MPa)
3. Modelling
0 0
0 0.003 0.006 0.009 0.012
3.1. Constitutive relationships
strain
Traditional continuum mechanics cannot directly pre-
Fig. 4. Experimental stressstrain and damaged volume strain curves for: dict the correct behaviour of the composite since such an
(a) GFRP-21R and (b) GFRP-13R.
approach is based on continuity and homogeneity of the
material. Indeed the concept of micromechanics is required
to perform a rigorous analysis of the material and to pre-
dict the eect of microstructure on its overall mechanical
properties. The constitutive law of the homogeneous med-
ium equivalent to the heterogeneous material is established
from a micromechanical modelling, taking into account
RC:E 8
where R and E are the macroscopic stress and macroscopic
strain tensors, respectively, and C is the fourth-rank elastic
stiness tensor of the composite polymer (:signies the
tensor contraction).
The volume-averaged stress R and strain E tensors are 2
given respectively by: Fig. 7. Local and global coordinates for a composite containing randomly
Z Z located and oriented spheroidal bers.
1 1
R rxdV and E exdV 9
V V V V
where r and e are the microscopic stress and microscopic where the transformation matrix Qij is given by:
strain tensors, respectively and V is the volume of a RVE. 2 3
The ber-reinforced composite presents initially perfect cos h sin h 0
interfacial bonding between the matrix (phase 0) and bers 6 7
Qij 4 sin h cos h 0 5 13
(phase 1). After its nucleation, damage (phase 2) is taken 0 0 1
into account as an added phase in the composite. There-
fore, the initial two-phase composite becomes a three-phase In (13), h (0 6 h 6 p) is the angle between x1 and x01 .
composite from the onset of damage nucleation. According to the studies of Tandon and Weng [14] and
According to the explicit formulation derived by Ju and Lee and Simunovic [7], the orientational averaging process
Chen [12] for unidirectionally aligned spheroid-reinforced for all orientations for the macroscopic stiness tensor can
composites, the macroscopic stiness tensor of the equiva- be written as:
lent homogeneous medium is dened by the following Z p
expression: hCi Qmi Qnj C mnpq Qpk Qql ph sin hdh 14
0
" #
X 2
1 where p(h) is the probability density function of the ran-
C C0 I Br I Sr Br 10
dom orientation which is equal to 1/p for uniformly ran-
r1
dom orientation.
where I is the fourth-rank identity tensor, C0 is the elastic- In order to achieve more realistic behaviour predictions,
ity tensor of the matrix material, Sr is the Eshelbys tensor the damage experimentally identied must be included in
for phase r and Br is a fourth-rank tensor dened by: the modelling. Based on experimental evidence, the deb-
1 1 onding along the interface between the matrix and bers
Br /r Sr Cr C0 C0 11
is the major failure mechanism in this material. The inter-
where Cr and /r are respectively, the elasticity tensor and facial debonding under increasing deformation leads to the
the volume fraction of the phase r. creation of new surfaces inducing void volume variation in
The Eshelbys tensor Sr is a function of the Poissons the material. The increase of the void volume fraction is
ratio of the matrix and the aspect ratio of the phase r. Its assumed to be a coupled eect of nucleation of voids and
formulation for a spheroidal inclusion embedded in an iso- growth of these voids. The rate of void volume fraction
tropic linear elastic medium can be found in the literature is governed by the following evolution relation:
[8,13]. /_ 2 /_ nucl /_ grow 15
Since for the studied material, the bers are randomly
oriented in the 12 plane, it is necessary to introduce global where /_ nucl is the nucleation rate of voids and /_ grow is the
axes denoted by the unprimed axes and local axes of each growth rate of existing voids.
bers denoted by the primed axes (Fig. 7). The random ori- The nucleation rate, linked to the local hydrostatic stress
entation of glass bers can then be described by introduc- applied on the ber, is expressed in a simple empirical way.
ing the angle h between the primed and unprimed axes: The progressive partial debonding between bers and the
matrix can be taken into account with the Weibull statisti-
xi Qij x0j 12 cal function [15]:
A. Bouaziz et al. / Composites Science and Technology 67 (2007) 32783285 3283
m
r1h where:
P d r1h 1 exp 16
ru Dt _
D/2 /2t /_ 2tDt 23
where r1h is the average internal hydrostatic stress of the 2
bers, m and ru are the Weibull parameters to be estimated The hydrostatic stress inside the bers is computed accord-
from experiments. m controls the shape of the Weibull ing to (17) and the current volume fraction of bonded bers
function and ru its scale. is updated in the following way:
From the Eshelby inclusion theory, the stress inside
/1tDt / /dtDt 24
bers is assumed uniform and is given by [7]:
!1 The volume fractions of damage (22) and bonded bers
X
2
1
r1 C1 I S1 B1 /1 I Sr Br :E 17 (24) are updated at each time increment step and are used
r1 to compute the progressive evolution of the stiness tensor.
After computation of the current stiness tensor, the stres-
The cumulative volume fraction of debonded bers is then ses are updated.
given by: Considering the width (23 mm) of the specimens used in
/d /P d r1h 18 the mechanical tests (Fig. 1), the geometrical distribution
of the bers (nominal length of bers is 50 mm giving
where / is the original volume fraction of bonded bers.
a = 100) is expected to be inhomogeneous. Fig. 8 shows
After partial debonding, the debonded portion of the
the inuence of the aspect ratio a of the bers on the pre-
ber does not transmit any more stresses to the matrix.
dicted Youngs modulus of the composite. It is clear that a
The debonding process is mechanically complex because
inuences strongly the Youngs modulus for smaller values
it introduces a local induced anisotropy which is not easy
of a and its eect saturates when considering higher values
to account for. In order to simplify the problem, the deb-
(about a > 30). Therefore, it is worth assuming that all
onded part of the ber is substituted by an equivalent vol-
bers have identical geometry.
ume of matrix material. By this way, replacing elastic
mechanical properties of the debonded bers by that of
3.2. Comparison between predicted and measured behaviour
the matrix leads to a global weakening of the composite.
Moreover, the void volume fraction which is introduced
The formulation given in the previous section is now
as a third-phase, also acts as supplementary weakening fac-
applied to uniaxial loading condition. The material proper-
tor. The nucleation rate of interfacial voids by the debond-
ties of the unsaturated polyester matrix and bers are:
ing of bers and the matrix is assumed to be controlled by
E0 = 4400 MPa, m0 = 0.35, E1 = 72000 MPa, m1 = 0.25.
the stress in the bers:
The Youngs modulus and the Poissons ratio of the matrix
oP d r1h are measured from video-controlled tensile tests. The
/_ nucl c/_ d c/ r_ 1h 19
or1h aspect ratio a of bers is 100. The parameters of the voids
nucleation rate (19) are numerically determined using a
where c is a scaling coecient for void nucleation rate and least squares regression tting on the accumulated damage
is assumed to be constant. curves observed in the experiments. They are found to be:
The growth rate of the previously nucleated microvoids m = 5, ru = 118 MPa and c = 0.08. These values are taken
at the interface is given by [16]: independent of the ber volume fraction.
3
/_ grow /nucl R_ h 20
4l 8000
RtDt Rt C : DEtDt 21
5000
0 20 40 60 80 100
The incremental nonlinear equations for damage are
solved using the Trapezoidal scheme:
Fig. 8. Inuence of the shape parameter a on the predicted macroscopic
/2tDt /2t D/2 22 Youngs modulus.
3284 A. Bouaziz et al. / Composites Science and Technology 67 (2007) 32783285
4. Conclusion 140
GFRP-21R without damage
GFRP-21R with damage
120
The damage behaviour of chopped random glass ber GFRP-13R without damage
unsaturated polyester matrix composites was investigated. 100
GFRP-13R with damage
stress (MPa)
80 0.012 80
experiment 60
damaged volume variation
60 modelling 0.009
40
stress (MPa)
20
40 0.006
0
0 0.003 0.006 0.009 0.012 0.015
strain
20 0.003
Fig. 11. Eect of damage on the overall behaviour.
0 0
The experimental results have demonstrated the impor-
0 0.003 0.006 0.009 0.012
strain tance of taking into consideration the volume strain in
the accurate characterization of composites damage, espe-
80 0.012 cially for the composites having a weak interfacial bond
experiment strength. The experimental results were used for the valida-
modelling tion of a micromechanical model based on the ensemble-
damaged volume variation