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Micromechanical Finite Strain Behavior, Damage, and Failure of Composite Materials

Uri Breiman


Contact:

Uri Breiman – breimanuri@gmail.com


Abstract:

Coupled nonlinear mechanical analysis of composite materials is desired at both micro and macro-scales, as the overall response is strongly dependent on the evolving microstructure due to the nonlinear and damage behavior of the phases or constituents.  A common macro-scale approach is to derive the mechanical stress-strain relations from complex strain-energy density functions using average stress or strain variables or invariants, with limited geometrical features, such as fiber orientation and distribution.  An alternative direct and refined finite-strain micromechanical formulation is proposed in this study for the damage and failure analysis of composite materials. To that end, the parametric high fidelity generalized method of cells (PHFGMC) formulation is extended for finite-strains and large deformations. The new finite-strain PHFGMC significantly reduces the complication of calibrating the macro energy function of the entire composite by simply calibrating the isotropic energy of the phases and homogenizing them to produce the anisotropic composite behavior. Therefore, the PHFGMC can simulate heterogeneous periodic media with general microstructures (e.g., fiber volume fraction, voids, microcracks, fiber waviness). An incremental-iterative numerical scheme was developed to solve the finite-strain PHFGMC equations. In addition, progressive failure is also proposed using the energy limiters approach. Different elastic and failure analyses of composite materials with periodic microstructure were performed with the new finite-strain PHFGMC, and were proven to be able to predict the local and global responses of a wide range of heterogeneous materials, such as soft tissue and engineered aerospace composites.


Representative Results:





Representative papers:





Education

Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (Tel Aviv University, Israel, 2024)

“Micromechanical Finite Strain Behavior, Damage, and Failure of Composite Materials”; Advisors: Prof. Rami Haj-Ali and Prof. Jacob Aboudi


M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering (Tel Aviv University, Israel, 2017)

“Dynamic Mechanical Analysis of Tubular Composite Joints: Rate Effect and Failure Prediction”; Advisor: Prof. Rami Haj-Ali


B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering (Tel Aviv University, Israel, 2015) 


Research Experience

Computational:

Development and programming of micromechanical tools and scripts as the ‘Parametric High Fidelity Generalized Method of Cells’ (PHFGMC) in Matlab and Fortran

Programming of user material interface for multiscale analysis for Finite Element (FE) software as Abaqus


Experiments:

Design of standard and non-standard experimental tools, structures, and specimens

Perform tensile, compressive, shear, and bending tests in several universal tester machine as Instron

Digital Image Correlation (DIC) processing using commercial equipment and software as LaVision

Material characterization of composites using SEM, optical microscopy, and micro-CT scans


References

[1] Breiman, Uri, Ido Meshi, Jacob Aboudi, and Rami Haj-Ali. "Finite strain PHFGMC micromechanics with damage and failure." Acta Mechanica 233, no. 7 (2022): 2615-2651.

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