FE Model

The FE model of composit lamina is developed in abaqus to simulate the mechanical

behavior of composite laminates under three-point bending loads using ABAQUS/Standard.
The specimens were asymmetrical laminates of 12 layers and ply angles are [0/90]. The
virtual composit specimen was discretised using continum shell element (SC8R) and the
loading tool and supports having identical shape were modeled as analytical rigid bodies
(R3D3). Different mesh configurations were considered for the convergence analysis and for
optimized model the total number of continum shell element (SC8R) are 31834 and
analytical rigid element (R3D4) are 13506. As a boundary conditions six degrees of freedom
of the supports were fixed, and the loading nose was allowed to move only in the direction of
the laminate thickness while the composit specimen is allowed to move in any direction.

In order to simulate the progressive damage of composites, the damage model is defined
in the material definition by using abaqus built-in Hashin Damage model. Damage initiation
in the composite was modeled using Hashin’s failure criteria . Abaqus handles the damage of
fiber reinforced composites by specifying an undamaged linear elastic response, followed by a
damage initiation criterion, and concluded by a damage evolution response. The undamaged
portion of the model is handled by the linear elastic definition of the material and damage
initiation criterion is defined based on the work of Hashin and Rotem. This criteria employ
four damage initiation mechanisms i.e, tension, fiber compression, matrix tension, and matrix
compression. The stiffness degradation and material softening give rise to convergence
problems. Thefore, viscous regularization can facilitate solution convergence. In this
regularization scheme, a viscous damage variable 4E-5 is defined for each damage mode.

In thie three point bending test model the general contact algorithm was employed for the
loading tool and composite contact and the cohesive surface solution was used for the
interfacial contact between the composite plies to simulate interlaminar damage by using the
surface to surace contact with finite slidding formulation. The surface-based cohesive
behavior provides a simplified way to model cohesive connections with negligibly small
interface thicknesses. During the simulation, the properties of the cohesive surface were
defined by the traction-separation response. The onset of delamination damage in the mixed
mode follows a quadratic nominal stress criterion and once the delamination damage onset
condition is satisfied, it evolves according to the BK critereon with exponent value of 1.45.
The coefficient of friction is taken as 0.3 between the plies and 0.25 for genral contact.

In nonlinear static analysis total time of simulation is 1sec with automatic time increment
and minmum time step is 1E-8 sec. In static step module automatic stablization is used with
0.2 damping factor to overcome the convergence issues. the solution control parametrs are
also adjusted for obtaining the converged solution withoud compromising the quality of
solution.