Accepted Manuscript

Progressive failure of Inter-woven carbon-Dyneema fabric reinforced hybrid

composites

M. Cao, Y. Zhao, B.H. Gu, B.Z. Sun, T.E. Tay

PII: S0263-8223(18)33401-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2018.12.024
Reference: COST 10487

To appear in: Composite Structures

Received Date: 19 September 2018

Revised Date: 6 November 2018
Accepted Date: 12 December 2018

Please cite this article as: Cao, M., Zhao, Y., Gu, B.H., Sun, B.Z., Tay, T.E., Progressive failure of Inter-woven
carbon-Dyneema fabric reinforced hybrid composites, Composite Structures (2018), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/
j.compstruct.2018.12.024

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Progressive failure of Inter-woven carbon-Dyneema fabric reinforced hybrid
composites
Cao M.a, Zhao Y.*,b., Gu B.H.a, Sun B.Z.a, Tay T.E.b
* Corresponding author (Email: mpezhy@nus.edu.sg)
Affiliations
a
College of Textiles, Donghua University, Shanghai, China, 201620
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore,
Singapore 117576

Abstract
This study investigates the in-plane mechanical behavior of a twill 2,2
carbon-Dyneema fabric reinforced hybrid composite. A finite element (FE) model of a
meso-scale representative volume element (RVE) is developed for simulating the
in-plane behavior of the composite. The development of damage in both carbon and
Dyneema yarns is modeled through progressive damage models with linear softening
laws and the non-linear response of the Dyneema yarn is experimentally determined
and described by the Ramberg-Osgood equation. The epoxy resin is regarded as an
elasto-plastic material. The damage development in different constituents of the
composite is analyzed and correlated with experimental observations. In addition, the
role of RVE size in modeling the behavior of the hybrid composite is investigated. It
is found that a minimum of size of about five basic units of RVEs is necessary to
achieve acceptable predictive results due to shear lag effects.

Keywords: Hybrid composites; Carbon-Dyneema; Progressive damage; RVE; Finite

element

1
1.Introduction
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) are gaining market share in various industries
such as aerospace, wind energy, and automotive applications because of their high
specific stiffness and strength. However, the high stiffness and strength of CFRPs
come at the expense of their limited toughness due to the low failure strain of carbon
fibers. Fiber hybridization is a promising strategy to toughen composite materials. By
combining high failure strain fibers such as polymer fibers with carbon fibers in a
hybrid system, pseudo-ductility can be introduced in the composite constitutive
behavior [1-4]. Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fibers have
several advantages including low density (0.97 g/cm3), reasonably high stiffness and
strength and biocompatibility[5, 6]. However, limitations of UHMWPE fibers include
their relatively poor compressive properties, poor adhesion to resin matrices, low heat
resistance and low creep resistance[7]. Therefore, hybridizing carbon fibers with
UHMWPE fibers can offer a better balance in tensile strength, compressive strength
and impact resistance.
Several studies have probed the mechanical behavior of carbon-UHMWPE hybrid
composites. Peijs et al. [8-10] investigated the tensile, fatigue and impact behavior of
such hybrid composites. The results showed positive hybrid effects through the
hybridization of carbon fibers and UHMWPE fibers (such as higher failure strain,
better structural integrity, better energy absorption ability, etc.). Li et al.[7] reported
improvements in compressive and flexural properties by incorporating a moderate
amount of carbon fibers into a UHMPEF SK66/epoxy 618 composite. Some
studies[11, 12] presented the ballistic properties of the hybrid composite, which
showed potential in bulletproof applications. However, most of these earlier studies
focus on the properties of the interlaminar hybrids – i.e. laminates made by stacking
plies of different fiber types. Research on intralaminar hybrids – i.e. laminates of plies
with interwoven yarns of different fiber types within each ply – is still relatively rare
[13, 14]. Recently, carbon-Dyneema intralaminar hybrid composites have received
considerable attention in applications such as sports equipment, bicycles frames and

2
automotive components. Carbon fiber is strong, light, and stiff, but is also relatively
brittle and poor vibration characteristics. Dyneema fibers, on the other hand, can
effectively damp vibration and resist shattering. Their hybrids could take advantage of
the stiffness of carbon fibers as well as the vibration-absorption and ductility of
Dyneema fibers.
Modeling hybrid fabric reinforced composites is challenging because of multiple
failure modes, their interactions, interlacing meso-structures and very different fiber
failure mechanics. The analysis of an RVE through FE is often a preferred route to
investigate the mechanical behavior of textile composites, as the meso-scale model is
able to account for the geometry of the yarns and different damage mechanisms of the
constituents [15-20]. In this paper, the tensile and shear behavior of the
carbon-Dyneema intraply hybrid composite is investigated experimentally and
numerically. A meso-scale RVE model is established to provide insights into the local
mechanical responses. The yarns are modeled as transversely isotropic with
progressive damage laws. The epoxy resin pocket is modeled as an elasto-plastic
material with isotropic damage. The damage model is implemented into a
user-defined material model (VUMAT) in the FE code Abaqus/Explicit. The
predictions of the proposed model are compared with experimental test results on both
macroscopic stress-strain responses and local strain distributions. The damage
development in different constituents of the composite is modeled and analyzed with
experimental observations. The damage mechanism is compared between the RVE
models of different sizes. The shear lag effect on modeling the damage evolution of
the hybrid composite is also discussed.

2. Materials and Experimental procedures

The fabrics used in this study are Dyneema® SK75 + carbon 3K twill 2/2 style fabric
(Fig.1) with an areal density of 190 g/m2, and Dyneema SK75 twill 3/1 fabric. A low
viscosity room temperature-cure epoxy resin, Epolam 5051, was selected as the
matrix material. The laminates were fabricated by stacking 8 plies of fabrics and resin

3
was infused through vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM). The laminates
were cured for 24 hours at room temperature and cut into specimen size by water jet.
The specimens were 200mm in length, 20mm and 25mm in width for tensile and
in-plane shear tests respectively. The specimen surfaces were speckled for DIC
analysis: they were first coated with a base layer of white paint and a black stochastic
pattern was subsequently applied onto the surface by lightly spraying a mist of flat
black paint.

Fig.1 Twill 2,2 carbon-Dyneema interlacing structure

Both tensile and shear tests were conducted using an INSTRON 8501 universal
testing machine with a 100 kN load cell. The specimens were loaded at 2mm/min
until failure. The gauge length was about 100mm for both tensile and shears tests.
Sand papers were used at the clamping region to prevent slippage of the grips. The
details of the tested specimens are listed in Table.1. The tensile test was conducted for
the hybrid composite and the pure Dyneema specimen following the ASTM
D3039-08 standard[21]. Cyclic tensile tests were also conducted on the pure Dyneema
specimens to characterize the nonlinear response of the Dyneema composite. The
shear specimens were fabricated at an angle of 45o relative to the warp direction and
loaded at 0o as illustrated in Fig.2. Two high elongation strain gauges were placed at
0o and 90o on the specimen surface. A digital image correlation system from the
4
Correlated Solutions Inc (CSI) was utilized to obtain full field strain maps on the
surface of the specimen.

Table.1 Details of test specimens

Specimens Type Number

Pure Dyneema 4

Carbon-Dyneema 3

Carbon-Dyneema 4

Fig.2 In-plane shear test loading direction

5
3. Development of meso-scale FE model

3.1 Unit cell representative volume element

A unit cell RVE of a carbon-Dyneema hybrid composite ply (Fig.3) is generated with
a detailed fabric geometry of yarns and matrix (Table.2) using the software
TexGen[22] developed by Nottingham University. The actual 3D geometry of a
woven composite is very complex and the RVE considered is taken from an idealized
single ply for simplification. The model consists of the yarns and the surrounding pure
matrix regions (resin pocket). The yarn is considered transversely isotropic and the
resin is treated as isotropic material.

Fig.3 Meso-scale RVE model of a carbon-Dyneema hybrid composite ply

Table.2 Geometrical properties of the RVE

Parameter Value
Yarn width W (mm) 1.5
Yarn thickness H (mm) 0.135
Gap between parallel yarns G (mm) 0.5
RVE width and length D (mm) 8
RVE thickness T (mm) 0.3
Yarn volume fraction Vyarn 0.53

6
3.2 Constitutive modelling
3.2.1 Effective properties of yarns
The bridging model of Huang[23] is employed to determine the effective stiffness
properties of yarns. In this paper, the quantity with suffix (superscript or subscript) f
or m indicates the fiber or the matrix phase. The homogenized compliance matrix for
the yarn is defined as:

(1)

where [Sf] and [Sm] refer to the compliance matrices of the fiber and resin,
respectively, and Vf and Vm are the volume fractions of the fiber and resin matrix in
yarns, respectively. [A] is a bridging matrix and [I] is a unit matrix. The fiber volume
fraction in each yarn is assumed to be 75%. The elastic properties of carbon and
Dyneema fibers as well as epoxy resin are listed in Table 3, and the predicted
mechanical properties of carbon and Dyneema yarns from Eq. (1) are given in Table 4.
In this study, the strength of the carbon and Dyneema yarns is assumed to be the same
as the strength obtained from unidirectional laminate tests and Table 5 lists the
strength parameters of the components of the RVE.

Table.3 Properties of composite components

Material property Carbon fibers Dyneema fibers Epoxy resin
E11(MPa) 225,000[24] 116,000[25] 3500[26]
E22(MPa) 15,000[24] 3,000[25]
E33(MPa) 15,000[24] 3,000[25]
G12(MPa) 15,000[24] 3,280[26] 1300[26]
G13(MPa) 15,000[24] 3,280[26]
G23(MPa) 7,000[24] 504[26]
0.26[17] 0.2[26] 0.35[26]
ν12

0.26[17] 0.2[26]
ν13

0.44[17] 0.2[26]
ν23

Table.4 Material properties of carbon and Dyneema yarns calculated from bridging model
Properties Carbon yarns Dyneema yarns
E11(GPa) 169.49 87.72

7
E22= E33 (GPa) 10.18 3.21
G12= G13 (GPa) 5.32 2.47
G23(GPa) 3.78 0.60
ν12=ν13 0.28 0.2

ν23 0.41 0.2

Table.5 Strength parameters of carbon and Dyneema yarns

Properties Carbon yarns Dyneema yarns

Fiber tensile strength S1t(MPa) 2150[27] 2400[28]
Fiber compressive strength S1c(MPa) 2150[27] 100[25]
Matrix tensile strength S2t=S3t(MPa) 62.3[29] 23[30]
Matrix compressive strength S2c=S3c(MPa) 199.8[29] 125[31]
Shear strength S12=S13=S23(MPa) 81.5[29] 48a
Longitudinal toughness Gfc (kJ/m2) 29.5[32] 100[33]
Transverse normal toughness Gnc (kJ/m2) 0.56[34] 0.44[35]
2
Transverse shear toughness Gsc (kJ/m ) 1.5[34] 1.5[34]b
a
This value is determined through in-plane shear tests of Dyneema laminates. The shear strength of Dyneema yarn

is assumed to be same as Dyneema laminates.

b
The transverse shear toughness of Dyneema yarn is assumed to be same as carbon yarn

3.2.2 Constitutive and damage model for yarns

3.2.2.1 Constitutive law
Since carbon fibers are relatively brittle, an elastic 3D orthotropic stiffness matrix is
assumed up to failure to describe the constitutive behavior of the carbon yarns.
Dyneema fibers, however, exhibit non-linear constitutive behavior [36, 37], and thus
the Ramberg-Osgood equation is used to represent the non-linear behavior of
Dyneema yarns. The equation implemented in the model is a reformulation derived by
Bogetti et al.[38], in which the effective stress is written explicitly in terms of the
strain:

(2)

where , and ρ are Ramberg-Osgood constants. The constants based on the

8
tensile results of Dyneema composites and the initial modulus of Dyneema yarns are
listed in Table.6.

Table.6 Ramberg-Osgood constants

86017.6 3398.2 2.5

The strain is composed of elastic and inelastic (non-recoverable) parts. The

recoverable part is the elastic portion of the strain, and the non-recoverable strain
(hereinafter referred to as (Fig.4)) consists of two parts, the strain due to damage

and plastic strain. If unloading initiates at a given strain , it is assumed to follow

a straight path defined by the secant modulus . The secant modulus is
measured to be about 1.45 times to the initial modulus and considered as a constant in
this model. The non-linear behavior of the Dyneema yarn is characterized by cyclic
tensile experiments, described further in Section 2 (Fig.5).

Fig.4 Non-linear response of Dyneema yarns

9
 400

350
secant modulus
300

Stress (MPa)
250

200

150

100

50

0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0
Strain (%)

Fig.5 Experimental characterization of non-linear behavior of Dyneema

3.2.2.2 Damage model

The progressive damage model[39] is adopted to describe the damage initiation and
damage evolution of the yarns.
The fiber dominated damage initiation is determined using a max-stress criterion in
the fiber direction for both carbon and Dyneema yarns:

(3)

where and are respectively the yarn tensile and compressive strength in the
fiber direction. The Tsai–Wu[40] failure criterion is used to determine the initiation of
matrix damage for both carbon and Dyneema yarns:

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

where and are the tensile and compressive strength in the transverse direction,
and is the in-plane shear strength. <> is the Macaulay bracket, the matrix failure
due to transverse compressive stress is not considered in this paper.
10
Once damage initiates, degradation factors are used to control
the stiffness degradation process. Here and are the degradation factors of

the fiber tensile and the compressive failure respectively. is the degradation
factor for the matrix dominated failure. A linear softening law using the effective
stress and displacement (Table.7) based on an energy criterion is adopted to describe
the damage progression of carbon yarns:

(8)

Considering the plastic deformation of Dyneema yarns, the degradation factors are
given by:

(9)

(10)

where is the initial equivalent displacement at which the failure criterion is

satisfied, is the equivalent plastic displacement at the damage initial point and

is the final equivalent displacement of the corresponding failure mode which

can be calculated by the following equation:

(11)

Here, denotes the initiation damage equivalence stress. In this paper, the matrix

dominated fracture energy is assumed to follow the B-K mixed-mode fracture

energy criterion[41]. The detailed calculation of mixed-mode fracture energy can be
referred to a previous study[39].

Table.7 Equivalent displacement and equivalent stress of each failure mode[39].

Failure modes Equivalent displacement Equivalent stress

Fiber tension

Fiber compression

11
 Matrix tension

The characteristic element length is defined as cube root of solid element volume[42].

In this study, the degradation factor of the carbon yarns is defined as:

(12)

However, the failure of the Dyneema yarns in fiber direction is considered to be

tensile failure dominated. Once the tensile damage propagates, the compressive
properties are also degraded, but not vice versa:
(13)
The degradation factor of Dyneema yarns is determined according to the stress state:

(14)

Furthermore, fiber damage sometimes occurs together with or after matrix failure. The
combined effect is described by the following degradation schemes for carbon and
Dyneema yarns:

(15)

in which the subscript 0 refers to the undamaged material properties, is the

secant modulus (as mentioned in Fig.4) at the point of unloading while and

are the degradation factors for matrix and fiber dominated damage, respectively.

12
3.2.3 Constitutive and damage model for resin
In this work, the resin surrounding the yarns is considered as an elastic-plastic
material after Melro[43] . The paraboloidal yield criterion proposed by [44] is adopted
to control the non-linear behavior of the resin material. The criterion considers
different yield strengths in the tensile and compressive directions, as well as the
pressure dependence of the material. The yield surface is defined by:
(16)
where and denote the yield strengths in compressive and tensile direction,

respectively. J2 = : is the second invariant of the deviatoric stress tensor

and I1 = trσ is the first invariant of the stress tensor. A non-associative flow rule is
used, allowing for volumetric deformation in plasticity. The hardening laws are
defined following the experimental results from Fiedler et al[31]. The model is
implemented using a return mapping algorithm with an elastic predictor/plastic
corrector strategy. The isotropic damage of the matrix is modeled. The damage
activation function is defined as:
(17)
where is an internal variable controlled by the damage evolution law. The loading
function is defined by:

(18)

where Xc and Xt are the compressive and tensile strengths of the material while the

invariants : and are determined using the effective stress

tensor, . The damage factor dm is defined by:

(19)

where Am is a constant calculated for each element, which can be obtained from the
regulated dissipated energy by the element’s characteristic length. The details of
implementing damage evolution law can be found in [43].

13
3.3 Finite element model
The model of the RVE (Fig.6) is meshed with linear tetrahedral elements C3D4 due to
the complex geometry. The mesh seed size is 0.2mm. The total number of elements in
the unit cell is 109070 (72726 for the matrix and 36344 for yarns). Note that the
material orientation of the elements in yarn structures is specified following fiber
directions.

Fig.6 Finite element model with tetrahedral mesh

Periodic boundary conditions are applied to ensure maintenance of the response of the
RVE as a repeatable element. Periodicity[45] is considered in two dimensions due to
the planar geometry of the twill weave:

(20)

where u, v, and w denote displacements in the x, y, and z directions, respectively;

notation and indicate the faces while indicates the common

coordinates shared by the corresponding points on the pair of faces (Fig.7). In this

paper, displacement is applied in the y direction, i.e., is specified.

14
 Fig.7 Illustration of periodic boundary conditions

In this paper, we opt to use an explicit solution method in order to avoid possible
convergence issues. The application of load steps should be as gradual and smooth as
possible to avoid spurious stress waves. This is achieved through the Abaqus built-in
displacement step amplitude curve where the first and second derivatives are
continuous. No contact algorithm was used in the model. A loading rate of 0.24m/s is
adopted for this study and the sensitivity of the FE results to the loading rate is also
investigated (Appendix A). Five RVE models (Fig.8) were made by the assembly of
different numbers of unit cells, i.e., RVE1 (single unit), RVE3 (three units), RVE5
(five units), RVE7 (seven units) and RVE5×2 (five units by two rows). They are
chosen to investigate the effect of RVE size on the stress-strain response under tension.
For shear, the RVE-Shear is obtained through 45 degrees rotation of the tensile model
(Fig.8).

15
 Fig.8 Different RVE models used in this paper

4. Results and discussion

4.1 Model correlation results

In this section, the 3D meso-scale model is validated by both local strain responses
and effective stress-strain curves obtained from experiments.
4.1.1 Local strain responses
Fig.9 (a) and (c) present the digital image correlation (DIC) surface strain field
distributions under tensile and shear loading respectively. It is found that different
stiffness between carbon and Dyneema yarns as well as the interlacing structure (Fig.
9(b) and (d)) lead to un-uniform local strain distribution in each repeat unit. In tensile
loading, the Dyneema yarns in the transverse direction cause larger deformations on
the above matrix surface. The specimen also exhibits a similar phenomenon under
shear loading. This is because the matrix above the soft Dyneema yarns is allowed to
deform more than the matrix above the stiffer carbon yarns.

16
 Fig.9 Influence of interlacing structure on strain field distribution:(a) DIC tensile strain contours and (b)
corresponding interlacing structure; (c) DIC shear strain contours and (d) corresponding interlacing structure

The strain distribution obtained from the finite element simulation is compared with
that from the DIC results (Fig.10). The strain profile along a chosen path (dotted line
in Fig.10) obtained from the RVE models are quantitatively compared to experimental
curves measured by DIC. The strain value against the distance along the path (dotted
line in Fig.10) is plotted. The strain distributions from the numerical simulation and
DIC results are very similar. However, the strain localizations found in the DIC
images are not as obvious as those in the FE simulation. This is mainly because the
features on the thin resin pockets are too fine to be accurately captured even with a
high resolution DIC system.

17
(a) tensile
0.016

0.014 DIC DIC

FEM
0.012
Loading
0.010
direction
0.008

0.006 FEM
0.004

0.002

0.000 carbon
0 2 4 6 8 10
Distance (mm)
Dyneema

(b) shear
0.0055

0.0050 DIC
FEM
0.0045
DIC

0.0040

0.0035

0.0030
FEM
0.0025
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Loading
Distance (mm)
direction
-0.0015
DIC
-0.0020 FEM
DIC
-0.0025

-0.0030

-0.0035
FEM
-0.0040

-0.0045
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Distance (mm)
carbon

Dyneema

Fig.10 Correlation between FEM and DIC results: (a)tensile at global strain of 0.86%; (b)shear at global strain of
0.75%

4.1.2 Effective stress–strain curves

4.1.2.1 0° tension
Fig.11 (a) shows the stress-strain curves obtained from the tensile tests and the
predictions of the RVE models. The load is applied along the vertical direction
(y-axis). Both the experimental and FE simulation curves show two peaks, which
18
indicates the non-simultaneous failure of carbon and Dyneema yarns. In addition, the
stress-strain response before the first drop is quite similar among different RVE
models. The first load drop is caused by carbon yarns breakage and it occurs at the
strain of 1.23%. The strain predicted by the model with different sizes is quite
consistent, however the lowest point at the first drop shows some variation. It can be
found that all the numerical simulation cases predict lower drops than the
experimental results and over predict the final failure strain. However, with the
increase of the RVE length from RVE1 to RVE5, the stress value of the lowest point
increases and approaches to the experiment value. The final failure strain for the
single unit model is around 2.8% and for RVE5 it is around 1.9%. The effect of RVE
size on the post-peak behavior of hybrid composites is discussed in detail in section
4.3.
4.1.2.2 ±45° in-plane shear loading
The in-plane shear behavior of the hybrid composite is presented in Fig. 11(b).
Initially, the elastic response of the numerical simulation and experimental results
correlate well. However, the numerical prediction gradually deviates from the
experimental curve for shear strain larger than 1.25%. The non-linear behavior is
more apparent for the experimental response compared to the numerical prediction.
One reason for this could be the non-linear shear behavior of carbon and Dyneema
yarns. In the model, the yarns are assumed to follow Hooke’s law under shear loading
and the plasticity of the matrix inside a yarn is not considered. More importantly,
distortion and relative displacements of the yarns (i.e. scissoring) for large applied
shear strains would account for non-linearity that is not considered in our model. In
addition, the idealized geometry meso-scale model may also account for this
phenomenon, as the yarns are not evenly packed in a woven laminate. For example, in
some regions, the yarns are more compactly arranged with less matrix material in
between. This would result in the nonlinearity to be triggered earlier due to the local
high stress concentration [46].

19
(a) 450 (b) 35
1unit
3units
400 5units loading 30
5units by 2
350 7units

Shear stress (MPa)

exp1 25
300 exp2
Stress (MPa)

exp3
250 20
200 exp1
15
150 exp2
10 exp3
100 exp4
FEM
50 5

0 0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5
Strain (%) Shear strain (%)

Fig.11 Stress-strain response comparison between experiment and finite element models: (a)tensile (b)shear

4.2 Damage evolution and failure mechanism

The damage patterns are similar among the various RVE models. As the damage
morphologies can be most clearly seen in the RVE1 due to its small size, the damage
process of a single RVE is displayed in this paper. Fig.12 demonstrates the damage
mechanisms of the constituents at different stages, such as yarns longitudinal and
transverse failure, resin cracking, etc.

20
21
Fig.12 Damage mechanisms and evolution process at six different global strains for RVE1: (a)Stress-strain curve;

(b)longitudinal damage; (c)transverse damage; (d)resin pocket damage

Local fiber compressive damage occurs in the fill Dyneema yarns at a strain level of
0.63% (Fig.12(b)). This is probably due to the constraining effects of the contacted
warp yarns at the interlacing area and the Dyneema yarns are vulnerable to
compressive loading. Matrix cracking (transverse tension damage) is also observed at
the interlacing area (Fig.12(c)). Despite the early damage in Dyneema yarns, the
model still exhibits a good load bearing capacity as indicated in the stress-strain
curves. At a global strain level of 1.25%, the carbon yarns approach complete failure,
leading to the first load drop off in the load-displacement curve. It is also found that
matrix cracking damage propagates to all the fill yarns indicating that fill yarns are
undergoing continuous damage during the tension test (Fig.12(c)). The breakage of
carbon yarns causes total transverse damage in the contacted Dyneema fill yarns
which is observed in experiments (Fig.12(c)). Furthermore, the resin pocket damage
also initiates at the carbon fiber fracture zone (Fig.12(d)). After the first load drop
caused by the carbon yarns breakage, the global stress gradually increases due to the
tensile load taken by the Dyneema yarns. In this RVE1 model, the Dyneema yarns
break at the global strain of 2.80% which is much higher than the experimental values.
Consider the limitations of the RVE1 model on predicting fracture process, several

22
RVE models in different sizes are established to compare the failure behavior of the
hybrid composites.

4.3 Effect of RVE size

Fig.13 compares the lowest point dropped from the first peak and the final failure
strain of different models. With the increase of the RVE length from RVE1 to RVE5,
the lowest point increases gradually, and the failure strain decreases continually
approaching the experimental results.
Lowest point Lowest point-exp value
Total failure strain Total failure strain-exp value
270 3.0
240
210 2.7

Total failure strain (%)

Lowest point (MPa)

180
2.4
150
120
2.1
90
60 1.8
30
0 1.5
RVE1 RVE3 RVE5 RVE5×2 RVE7
RVE size

Fig.13 Effect of RVE size on the lowest point and total failure strain

Fig.14(a) shows the stress distribution of a fractured carbon yarn and a nearby
Dyneema yarn in the RVE1, RVE3, RVE5 and RVE7 models at the strain of 1.85%,
just before the Dyneema yarn breakage. Due to the shear lag effect, the broken carbon
yarn gradually recovers its load carrying capacity away from the fracture. Meanwhile,
the fracture of the carbon yarn causes stress concentration in nearby Dyneema yarns
which locally takes over the additional load. It is found that the stress concentration is
more pronounced with the increase of the model length due to shear lag effects.
Therefore, the global failure strain reduces with the increase of size of the RVE. The
stress distribution of a fracture carbon yarn in different RVEs is plotted Fig.14(b). The
recovery stress converges at the stress level of 1600 MPa at the distance
approximately 20mm away from the fractured end in the RVE5 and RVE7 models. It
23
can be inferred that the critical effective length of the carbon yarns is around 20mm in
this model.

(a) Fracture zone

Carbon and dyneema yarns stress state

at global strain of 1.85%

RVE1

RVE3
S11 (MPa)

Carbon 100 400 700 1000 1300 1600

Dyneema 633 967 1300 1633 1967 2300 RVE5

RVE7

(b) RVE1 RVE3

1800 1800

1600 1600

1400 1400

1200 1200
S11 (MPa)

S11 (MPa)

1000 1000

800 800

600 600

400 400

200 200

0 0
0.0 1.5 3.0 4.5 6.0 7.5 9.0 0 5 10 15 20 25
distance (mm) distance (mm)

1800
RVE5 1800
RVE7
1600 1600

1400 1400

1200 1200
S11 (MPa)

S11 (MPa)

1000 1000

800 800

600 600

400 400

200 200

0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
distance (mm) distance (mm)

Fig.14 Stress comparison between different RVE models: (a) stress distribution in carbon and Dyneema yarns in

24
 different RVE models; (b) stress distribution of a fractured carbon yarn in different RVE models

Additionally, more than one fracture occurs in the carbon yarns of the RVE7 model.
Therefore, the increased length cannot contribute to the stress recovery in the
fractured yarns. Accordingly, the RVE5 model is the optimum size to characterize the
tensile behavior of the hybrid material.

5.Conclusion
The in-plane behavior of a twill 2,2 carbon-Dyneema fabric reinforced hybrid
composite is analyzed by a three-dimensional meso-scale representative volume
element model. In this model, the carbon and Dyneema yarns are regarded as a
transversely isotropic homogenized material. The non-linear behavior of the Dyneema
yarns in fiber direction is described by the Ramberg-Osgood equation. A combination
of the max-stress and Tsai–Wu failure criterion is used to predict the fiber-dominated
failure and matrix-dominated failure in both carbon and Dyneema yarns respectively.
A linear softening law using the effective stress and displacement based on fracture
energy is adopted to describe the damage progression. The resin pocket is modeled as
a non-associative elasto-plastic material with isotropic damage.
The proposed model is correlated and validated using local strain distributions and
global effective stress-strain responses. The predicted surface strain contours
correlated reasonably well with the DIC results. Besides, the failure mechanism of the
hybrid composite under tension load is analyzed. Both the experimental and FE
simulation curves show two peaks which indicates the non-simultaneous failure of
carbon and Dyneema yarns. In addition, the damage morphology of each constituent
observed in the experiment shows good agreement with the prediction of the FE
model.
The size of the RVE has a significant effect on the results of the simulation. With the
increase of the model size from RVE1 to RVE5, the progressive failure prediction
approaches the experimental curves. This phenomenon is due to the shear lag effect.
However, further increasing the model size from RVE5 to RVE7 shows no significant
25
change, which suggests that the RVE5 model is the optimum size for characterize the
tensile behavior of the hybrid composite.

Acknowledgements
The support of NUS through research grant R265-000-523-646 is gratefully
acknowledged. The support from the Special Excellent PhD International Visit
Program by DHU is also gratefully acknowledged.

Appendix A
The sensitivity of the FE results to the tensile loading rate is investigated at three
different loading rates, i.e., 2.4 m/s, 0.24 m/s and 0.024 m/s. The obtained stress-strain
curves of RVE1 are displayed in Fig.A1.
450
0.024m/s
400 0.24m/s
350 2.4m/s
Stress (MPa)

300
250
200
150
100
50
0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0
Strain (%)

Fig.A1 Sensitivity of the FE results to the loading rate

It is found that increasing the loading rate from 0.024 m/s to 0.24 m/s does not
significantly alter the stress-strain curve. However, when the rate is increased to 2.4
m/s, both stress and total strain to failure start to increase. Therefore, the loading rate
of 0.24 m/s is adopted in this study. Furthermore, as recommended in Abaqus
Analysis User’s Manual[42]: to perform a quasi-static analysis, the work done by the
external forces ( ) should be nearly equal to the internal energy ( ) of the system,
and the kinetic energy ( ) of the deforming material should not exceed a small

26
fraction (typically 5% to 10%) of its internal energy throughout most of the process.
The corresponding energy history curves using the loading rate of 0.24 m/s are plotted
in Fig. A2, which confirm that 0.24 m/s is an appropriate loading rate for the current
model.

(a) 150 (b) 20

18
EW
120 16
EI
14
Energy (mJ)

EK/EI (%)
90 12
10
60 8
6
30 4
2
0 0
0.0000 0.0002 0.0004 0.0006 0.0008 0.0010 0.0000 0.0002 0.0004 0.0006 0.0008 0.0010
Time (s) Time (s)

Fig.A2 Energy history curves at 0.24 m/s: (a) Comparison between the and ; (b)

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