Micromechanical evaluation of failure models for unidirectional fiber-reinforced composites

In this paper, micromechanical simulations are employed to evaluate the performance of the Tsai–Wu and Hashin failure criteria for fiber-reinforced composites, especially in stress states whose experimental reproduction is complicated. Micromechanical responses are generated using a finite element model of a representative volume element, in which only the matrix material experiences damage and the fibers are assumed to be elastic. Micromechanical simulations of basic load cases are used to calibrate macrolevel criteria. Finally, the response of the micromodel and macromodels is compared for various load combinations. Despite a good agreement between Tsai–Wu criterion predictions and micromodel results in a wide range of stress states, some stress combinations are highlighted for which the strength is not predicted accurately. Additionally, accuracy of the Hashin criterion suffers from ignoring the influence of stress in fiber direction on matrix failure.