Comparison of progressive damage simulation of 3D woven composites between voxel and conformal discretization models

This paper comprehensively compares the progressive damage simulation of 3D woven composites between the voxel and conformal mesh models. A progressive damage model for capturing the damage mechanisms of 3D woven composites is proposed, in which the longitudinal fiber fracture, transverse inter-fiber crack and matrix failure are detected by the Puck criterion, 3D hashin criteria and modified von Mises criterion, respectively. Benefiting from the periodicity of the woven architecture, a mesoscopic representative volume cell with high fidelity is constructed based on the microscope observations. The voxel and conformal meshing techniques are employed to discretize the periodic RVC model, and a mesh convergence analysis is performed to estimate the influence of element size. The comparison of the two discretization models is conducted in terms of fiber volume fraction, macroscopic stress-strain relations, damage developments and local stress fields. The results indicate that the damage initiations and developments obtained from voxel models are highly influenced by the spurious stress concentrations and artificial connections induced by the steplike elements.