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Impact Crush Modeling of Chopped Fiber Reinforced Polymers
Abstract
Chopped fibers reinforced polymer composites are considered for use in many automotive applications. Commonly used structural design software have difficulties predicting manufacturing parameters and constituent properties of short or long fiber reinforced polymer composites to meet mandated design requirements. A computational method is introduced for the virtual simulation of performance of chopped fibers in polymer composites. This new approach did lead to the development of a specialized Multi-Scale Material Characterization of composite system comprising of: a) chopped fiber based on Eshelby and Mori Tanaka failure theory, b) micro-macro mechanics, and damage failure theory, c) tensor stiffness averaging technique; and d) optimizer as part of the durability analysis software GENOA. The material model established in MCQ-Chopped is used in FEA interface with GENOA Multi Scale Progressive Failure Analysis (MS-PFA). The crush modeling of composite crushed tube was test validated using GENOA software in 3 distinct integrated steps, such as follows: a) Characterizing Material Properties of composite materials composed of chopped fibers using MCQ-Chopped and validating against Toyota coupon test data; b) Mapping and Transformation - of statistical average tensor orientation from unstructured Moldex3D detailed model to LS-DYNA FE solver. In this regard GENOA platform software algorithm was used to perform 3D models data management and visualize the mapping error between two dissimilar meshes; and c) De-Homogenized Multi-Scale Progressive Failure Dynamic Analysis (MS-PFDA) - of Toyota provided 3D model of tube structure. MS-PFDA-LS-DYNA Crush worthiness analysis was performed to predict the damage and fracture evolution process. The simulation results were compared with Toyota test provided load vs. displacement and acceleration vs. time curve. In addition the software prediction provided the damage and fracture evolution and the contributing failure mechanism.