Adjunctive Damage Model to Describe the Interaction of Different Defect Types in Textile Composites on the Strain-Rate-Dependent Material Behaviour

Abstract

Textile composites are predestined for crash-loaded lightweight structures due to their adjustable energy absorption capacity, but they can exhibit different types of defects that occur during production (voids) and in operation (fatigue). The influence of such defects, especially the interaction of several defect types on the strain-rate-dependent material behaviour, is still insufficiently researched and can represent a safety risk. Therefore, this paper presents a phenomenological model that can be used to mathematically describe the strain-rate-dependent stress-strain behaviour of nominally defect-free and defect-affected textile composites. An adjunctive damage model in the sense of continuum damage mechanics is introduced, which also considers the interaction of both defect types for the first time. For the model validation, extensive experimental tests on glass fibre non-crimp fabrics reinforced epoxy (GF-NCF/EP) composites are performed. The focus is put on the influence of voids and fatigue-related pre-damage under subsequent tensile loading at strain rates up to 40 s−1. The theoretical studies show a good coincidence with the experimental results. The novel model provides a method for the efficient generation of material maps for numerical highly dynamic crash and impact analyses for defect-free and defective textile composites. As a result, a flexible and practice-oriented model approach is available, which makes a significant contribution to an improved understanding of materials and enables a future defect-tolerant design of textile composites.