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Computational Materials Science: C. Qian, L.T. Harper, T.A. Turner, S. Li, N.A. Warrior
Computational Materials Science: C. Qian, L.T. Harper, T.A. Turner, S. Li, N.A. Warrior
Computational Materials Science: C. Qian, L.T. Harper, T.A. Turner, S. Li, N.A. Warrior
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Size effects are observed within discontinuous fibre composites, such that the material properties change
Received 2 November 2011 with the specimen volume. Representative volume elements (RVEs) are commonly used to simulate ran-
Received in revised form 21 May 2012 dom fibre architectures for finite element analysis of discontinuous fibre composites. A series of simpli-
Accepted 31 May 2012
fied 2D RVE models have been created and studied in this paper, in order to determine the relationship
Available online 27 June 2012
between the critical RVE size and fibre length and volume fraction. All models are subjected to periodic
boundary conditions, but average properties are extracted from an inner region offset from the model
Keywords:
boundary by a distance equivalent to two fibre lengths. According to Saint–Venant’s principle, this offset
Carbon fibres
Discontinues fibre composites
removes the uncertainty associated with the approximate boundary conditions. A statistical stopping
Finite element analysis criterion has been adopted to determine the number of realisations required to achieve a representative
RVE set of elastic properties for each fibre architecture. The critical RVE side length is shown to be approxi-
mately four times the fibre length when considering convergence of the tensile and shear stiffnesses
for the range of fibre lengths and volume fractions studied.
Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
0927-0256/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.commatsci.2012.05.067
C. Qian et al. / Computational Materials Science 64 (2012) 106–111 107
therefore the limitation of volume fraction. Periodic boundary con- bundle aspect ratios considered (length/diameter ranges from
ditions are applied to the FEA model and effective material proper- 1.8 to 7). The influence of RVE thickness on the RVE size has
ties are calculated based on Saint–Venant’s principle. Various RVE not been investigated in the current study.
sizes are studied in order to determine the critical RVE sizes at The influence of varying element mesh density on the stress/
different fibre length and volume fractions. A statistical stopping strain distribution within the model has been studied, using the
criterion is also employed to establish the relationship between same length for the beam elements and the side length of the con-
the required number of realisations and the effective RVE size, tinuum elements. The mesh density is directly dependent on the
enabling CPU effort to be optimised. number of embedded beam elements within the model, which is
a function of the fibre volume fraction, coupon thickness and fibre
tow size. The mesh needs to be finer to account for a greater num-
2. Generation of mesoscopic RVEs
ber of bundle ends and crossover points, as more beam elements
potentially share the same host elements. The error between an
Planar 2D fibre architectures are generated by a modified ran-
element length of 0.05 mm and 0.0125 mm is less than 1% for all
dom sequential adsorption scheme programmed in Visual BasicÒ.
of the fibre volume fractions (10%, 30%, 50%) studied at a thickness
Fibre bundles are deposited over a region of interest (ROI), indi-
of 3.5 mm. An element length of 0.05 mm has been used for all
cated by the outer square in Fig. 1. Random numbers are generated
subsequent models.
for the x–y coordinates of the centre of mass for each fibre, and a
third number is used to determine the fibre orientation. This 2D
model allows intersecting fibres, thus removing the fibre volume 3. Boundary conditions
fraction limitation. Moreover, this 2D approach is computationally
inexpensive, therefore is practical for simulating larger specimens. Boundary conditions are difficult to derive for random hetero-
Fibre architectures are meshed suitably for processing by ABA- geneous fibre composites and also have a large impact on the
QUS/Standard. The matrix material is modelled using structural RVE generation. It is common to see periodic conditions imposed
2D, plane stress continuum elements (CPS8), since the thickness [9,10], where the inhomogeneous material is approximated by an
of the RVE is typically smaller than the in-plane dimensions. One infinitely extended model material with a periodic phase arrange-
dimensional beam elements (B22) with circular cross-section are ment. However, enforcing periodicity for long slender fibres with
used to represent the fibre bundles, where the diameter is assigned larger aspect ratios influences the local fibre volume fraction distri-
as a function of the filament count and tow volume fraction (Vtow). bution around the edge of the model, which can affect the critical
The internal structure of each bundle contains resin, and therefore size of the RVE [3].
the volume of deposited bundles (Vdeposited) is adjusted to satisfy In the present paper, all models are subjected to periodic
the target volume fraction of the laminate (Vf): boundary conditions, assuming translational symmetries in the x
and y directions. However, it is incorrect to assume periodicity as
Vf
V deposited ¼ ð1Þ the material is non-repeating and fibres bridging the RVE cause
V tow
local discontinuities at the boundary. However, according to
Beam elements are constrained to the continuum matrix ele- Saint–Venant’s principle [1], the effects of incorrectly prescribed
ments using the ABAQUS built-in function EMBEDDED ELEMENT. boundary conditions affect only a limited zone next to the bound-
This technique eliminates the extra degree of freedom on the ary. An approximation to the exact solution can therefore be found
embedded elements (fibres) compared with the host elements if a sub-domain is extracted from the model at some critical ‘decay
(matrix) and provides a multi-point constraint. Consequently reg- length’ away from the boundary [1], as shown in Fig. 1.
ular shaped meshes can be used to model the matrix material, The RVE boundary length was set to at least two times the fibre
without node sharing between beam (fibre) and continuum length in all cases, as suggested in [11]. Fig. 2 shows an example of
(matrix) elements. Following [8], the modelling parameters used how the predicted in-plane stiffnesses vary with increasing decay
for the epoxy resin are 3350 MPa for tensile modulus and 0.38 length (‘d’) for a model consisting of 10 mm long fibres, randomly
for Poisson’s ratio. The fibre modulus is 144000 MPa and Poisson’s distributed at a fibre volume fraction of 10% (results are norma-
ratio is 0.33. All models consist of 24 K fibre tows with an effective lised wrt fibre length ‘l’). All three stiffness values converge after
diameter of 1.4 mm, at 60% tow volume fraction. The composite a decay length of two times the fibre length (20 mm). All three
RVE is modelled to be 3.5 mm thick in all cases, which is a typical curves plateau at d/l = 2 and the error between this point and d/
thickness for components manufactured from the range of fibre l = 5 is less than 1% for all three stiffness components. Von Mises
Fig. 1. Schematic of random sequential adsorption model. Outer boundary (blue) depicts the edge of the model. Fibres are cropped and boundary conditions are applied at the
region of interest (Red). Elastic constants are extracted from within the inner RVE boundary (black). Black lines represent carbon bundle centre lines. (For interpretation of the
references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
108 C. Qian et al. / Computational Materials Science 64 (2012) 106–111
inner RVE boundary. All three plots share similar internal features,
but the magnitude of the stresses around the boundary of d/l = 0.5
are generally lower than d/l = 2 and d/l = 5. The stress at an arbi-
trary nodal point (node 519581) has been compared for the decay
lengths and it is seen that the error is less than 2% between d/l = 2
and d/l = 5 (110.9 MPa for d/l = 0.5, 125.3 MPa for d/l = 2 and 123.3
for d/l = 5). The displaced shape for d/l = 2 is also very similar to d/
l = 5. The edges are not straight and therefore conventional dis-
placement boundary conditions for this RVE model would indeed
be inappropriate, which further supports the use of Saint–Venant’s
principle for heterogeneous materials in this application.
The critical decay length has been established for a range of
models containing different fibre lengths (2.5 mm, 5 mm, 10 mm),
volume fractions (10%, 30%, 50%) and orientation distributions (ran-
dom, aligned). The error between the elastic properties at d/l = 2
and d/l = 5 is less than 2% in all cases, independent of fibre length
Fig. 2. Effect of decay length on the calculated in-plane stiffnesses for an RVE and fibre volume fraction. The critical decay length is therefore
containing 10 mm long fibres at 10% vf. (decay length is plotted as a function of
fibre length).
found to be two times the length of the fibres in all cases. This
observation agrees well with findings in [1], which shows that the
critical decay length is two times the length scale of the reinforcing
inclusion. A decay length of d/l = 2 is used for all subsequent
(a) analyses.
5. Results
where L is the RVE edge length. The parameters in Eq. (3) are sum-
marised in Table 2 for each material. This relationship can be used
to calculate the number of realisations required to achieve a relative
error of 5% for larger RVE sizes. The number of realisations for each
RVE size has been multiplied by the number of degrees of freedom
in each model. This provides a measure of CPU effort required to
achieve a representative set of elastic constants as a function of
RVE size. Fig. 7 shows CPU effort as a function of RVE edge length
for E1. Similar trends were also observed for G12 and v12 and a
summary of the critical RVE sizes are presented in Table 1. Filled
points in Fig. 7 represent the data from the simulations and lines
of best fit have been calculated using the power law relationship
Fig. 5. In-plane shear modulus G12 as a function of RVE edge length normalised by
of the standard deviation from Eq. (3) and Table 2. A local minimum
fibre length. All x-axis values should be integers; however some data points have occurs for each material architecture, indicating the optimum RVE
been offset ±0.05 to provide further clarity. size in terms of CPU effort required to achieve a representative
110 C. Qian et al. / Computational Materials Science 64 (2012) 106–111
Table 1
Critical RVE size as a function of fibre length and fibre volume fraction. Results are presented for two methods (1) convergence of effective properties, and (2) convergence of CPU
effort. L is RVE edge length and a is fibre length.
Table 2
Constants for Eq. (3) for coarseness, departure from isotropy and a range of elastic constants as a function of fibre architecture. R2 values indicate the goodness of fit.
Fig. 7. Effect of RVE size on CPU effort to determine E1 (expressed in terms of degrees of freedom multiplied by the number of realisations) at a target relative error of 5%.
Data points represent simulation averages and lines are power-law fits.
value for E1. This local minimum occurs when the number of real- composites. Saint–Venant’s Principle has been demonstrated for
isations required to achieve a relative error of 5% converges to unity. discontinuous random fibre composites to enable the use of
Whilst the number of realisations has converged by this point, total periodic boundary conditions, and the critical decay length is
CPU effort begins to increase as the number of degrees of freedom two times the fibre length using the current modelling
continues to follow a squared relationship. Local minima occur at approach.
L = 24 mm, 68 mm and 94 mm for the 2.5 mm, 5 mm, and 10 mm Both deterministic and statistic size effects have been found
fibre length materials with a 30% volume fraction, indicating that for effective material properties. For tensile and shear modulus,
the RVE size is fibre length dependent. convergence starts as the statistical size effects become domi-
The convergence of the CPU effort appears to be dominated by nate; however, Poisson’s ratio is independent of the RVE size.
the number of realisations, rather than the total number of degrees The critical RVE size for the convergence of effective properties
of freedom for each RVE size. Convergence typically occurs when is four times the fibre length using the current modelling
n = 1, which implies that it is more computationally efficient to test approach.
one large model rather than several smaller ones. In practice how-
ever, this is not always feasible depending on the scale of the prob-
lem and the computational resources available. References
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