Direct numerical simulation of fracture behaviour for random short wood fibre-reinforced composites in comparison with digital image correlation experiments

Abstract

The present work is to predict the fracture behaviour of biocomposites from the tensile properties of its components. In this work, a direct numerical simulation was realized for fracture behaviour of random short spruce fibre-reinforced composites. For calculations, wood fibres were considered as linear elastic bodies and polypropylene matrix as an elastic–plastic material. Then, the numerical results were compared with the experimental results obtained by digital image correlation (DIC). This comparison indicates that random fibre finite element (FE) model can be able to fairly reflect the influence of random fibre microstructure on the fracture behaviour of the composites. The calculation and comparison show that in a region in the front of the crack tip, the average values of J-integral of both random fibre and homogeneous FE model are in good agreement with that of DIC experiment under the same extension load.