Micromechanical Homogenization Methods of Short Glass Fiber-reinforced Injection-molded Bio-based Composite Material

Abstract

Herein, microscale approaches were explored to determine the homogenized properties of short fibre reinforced polymer material. The analytical homogenization follows the shear lag principle to approximate elastic modulus in the case of longitudinally oriented short fibres. For the finite element-based homogenization, a periodic 3D representative volume element of the composite is constructed to apply forward numerical homogenization. This unit cell is discretized by tetrahedral 3D finite elements resulting in a periodic mesh. An effective spring element method was further developed to homogenize the properties of short fibre-reinforced material. The reduced order spring method predicted the elastic properties almost equally to the finite element-based homogenization. A novel bio-based polyamide matrix with 40% glass fibre content and a traditional polyamide with 30% glass fibre reinforcement serve for the application and validation of the developed micromechanical methods. An additional effectivity parameter must be considered to capture the manufacturing imperfections of the injection molding process. This parameter can be calibrated based on experimental data from tensile testing. The developed numerical frameworks show good potential for extensions to more advanced modelling of the composite, such as nonlinear behaviour or failure mechanism.

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