A closed multiscale simulation framework for the simulation of woven composite structures

Kurzfassung

The rapid evolution of climate change in the last decade rises the requirements on aeronautics and automotive transportation systems in the field of sustainability. Composite materials have been widely used for their high specific properties compared to metallic materials. On the downside, they are particularly relying on oil-derived raw materials and can only be recycled to a lesser extent. Furthermore, composites require high experimental effort for the mechanical characterization compared to their metallic counterparts. To accelerate the development and manufacturing of new sustainable alternatives (oil-free or bio-derived materials), new solutions are being developed on the numerical level. In particular, multiscale simulations are benefiting from the recent advances in the computational field and the improvement of hardware. Through the use of virtual material characterization, new material combinations can be rapidly investigated and their potential on the structural scale assessed. Virtual testing necessitates in predesign studies few to no experimental tests and contributes to the further reduction of the carbon footprint in the development process. In the present work, a closed multiscale simulation framework is developed on the microscale, mesoscale and macroscale. The prerequisites for the multiscale chain are discussed and some key steps towards the model generation are detailed. After generating and computing the finite-element models, the material properties are transmitted between the different scales upstream without any user intervention up to the macroscopic scale. In this paper, we illustrate the potential of the developed methodology at the example of a glass-fibre reinforced woven structure under a generic loading. In particular, key remaining issues in the field of the multiscale simulation are raised.