The Use of Micromechanical Models to Predict Fiber Reinforced Plastics
Willems Fabian (1)*, Bonten Christian (1)
(1) Institut für Kunststofftechnik - Baden-Württemberg - Germany
Fiber reinforced plastics are gaining importance for their weight saving potential due to the influence of socio-political topics such as energy efficiency and conservation of resources. Long fibers and short fibers are increasingly used for structural components. The high requirements on the performance in automotive, aerospace and also the sports and leisure sector demand a reliable prediction of the parts behavior. Therefore the anisotropy of the local fiber properties caused by the processing has to be considered. In general this can be taken into account by coupled process and structural simulations. This requires a capable process simulation with sufficient calibrated prediction models to reliably predict the processing. In addition to this also the calculation of the mechanical properties by means of micromechanical models has to be calibrated sufficiently well in the following step. In order to achieve this, a comprehensive database of experimental material properties has to be determined or existent. Based on this information the challenge to calibrate the process models as well as the micro mechanical models remain. To solve this, a reversed engineering method to determine all parameter of a micromechanical model is shown.