Determination of the composite’s representative volume for longitudinal tensile test simulations

Abstract

In this study the proper size of the composite material’s representative volume element is addressed. Longitudinal tensile test simulations are conducted for a range of sizes and several variants of material models for matrix, fibre and interface. It is found, that matrix and interface degradation with prescribed properties do not influence the value of failure engineering stress for the cell in comparison with model, where only fibre damage model is set, and the adequate size of the cell is shown to be 80 µm. In contrast, variant contained stochastic fiber strength distribution shows different value for engineering failure stress and strain and suggests larger size of the material cell for simulations. Received results might be useful for accurate micromechanical modelling of material testing.