Numerical analysis of the in-plane shear behavior of commingled fiber glass–polypropylene composite reinforcement using hypoelastic constitutive model

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed description of a hypoelastic constitutive model. An accurate and robust numerical algorithm is developed and implemented in the Abaqus/Explicit finite element code by means of a vectorized user material (VUMAT) subroutine written in FORTRAN. To validate this model, several elementary tests with different loading conditions were performed on two different types of commingled fiberglass–polypropylene woven composite. The numerical values obtained for the simple tensile test, simple shear test, and objectivity test, were in good agreement with the analytical results of the same tests. The second part of this study was dedicated to the extension of the validation process by performing more realistic simulations of the standard in-plane shear test (picture frame). The numerical responses obtained from the simulation of the picture frame and those from the benchmark curried out by Cao et al. are in good agreement.