Abstract：Since the fields of fiber-reinforced composites expand continuously, the effect of microstructure damage on the mechanical properties of composites has become an essential yet unclarified issue. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a feasible and efficient method to model and simulate the microstructure failure of fiber-reinforced composites. In this paper, a peridynamic-based computational scheme is proposed to simulate the failure of composite microstructure, using discrete pixel points of micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) images taken from the micro-CT scanning technology. Peridynamics is a nonlocal theory based on integral equations. Therefore, it is more convenient to implement particle-based numerical methods, which makes it more effective to simulate the failure process from deformation to fracture. By introducing the gray threshold segmentation technology into the micro-CT image processing, a particle discretization containing in situ information of composite materials can be obtained, which is employed for peridynamic simulations. Consequently, the complex geometric reconstruction and finite element partition are unnecessary, whereas the in situ information of composite microstructure, such as fiber, matrix, and voids, is preserved as possible. The simulation results show that the peridynamic modeling based on micro-CT images can accurately capture the microstructure information of composites and successfully simulate the failure evolution of composite materials.
2022, Vol. 43 
