Confinement Shear Effect in Fiber Composites

Abstract

Composites have been playing an increasingly important role in various engineering applications. We examine the confinement shear effect arising in the neighborhood of the fiber-matrix interface in fiber-reinforced materials, which is a problem calling for further investigations. It is well known that the progressive failure process strongly depends on the interfacial transition zone (ITZ). Thus, we take the studied material as three-phased, i.e. fiber, matrix and interface in between. The generalized beam (GB) lattice model is adopted to simulate the compressive failure behavior of a representative volume element with one fiber included. Numerical results are provided to explain the confinement shear effect during the progressive failure process in specimens with various fiber-matrix properties, fiber orientations and distributions.