Implementation of domain superposition technique for the nonlinear analysis of composite materials

Abstract

A domain superposition technique for the nonlinear modeling of composite materials has been developed in this paper. Instead of explicitly modeling the conjugate matrix domain and reinforcement domain with proper matching mesh interfaces between them in the manner of a traditional finite element analysis, a domain superposition technique model uses the global domain geometry superimposed with the reinforcement phase material domain geometries. The major purpose of doing so is to avoid the difficulty of directly constructing the matrix phase material geometries, which are usually hard to build due to the presence of likely geometric degeneracies in most composite materials internal architectures. The finite element meshes for domain superposition technique analyses are much simpler to establish than those used for traditional finite element analyses. Numerical examples are given to show the validity of the proposed modeling procedures.