A hygro-thermo-mechanical constitutive model for multiphase composite materials

Published in Int. Journal of Solids and Structures Vol. 33 (20-22), pp. 3179-3186, 1996
doi: 10.1016/0020-7683(95)00248-0

Abstract

The paper describes a hygro-thermo-mechanical constitutive model appropriate for numerical simulation of multiphase composite material behaviour. The theory is based on the mixture of the basic substances of the composite and allows to evaluate the inter-dependent behaviour between the different compounding constitutive models. The initial anisotropy of each compounding can be taken into account by means of a mapped isotropic plastic formulation. This is a generalization of classic isotropic plasticity theory applied to orthotropic or anisotropic materials. The basic assumption is the existence of a stress and strain real anisotropic spaces and the respective fictitious isotropic spaces where a mapped fictitious problem is solved. Those spaces are related by means of two fourth order transformation tensor. The combination of mixing theory and the mapped isotropic plastic approach provides a powerful constitutive framework for the numerical treatment of bulk-fiber composite materials.