Damage Modeling in Random Short Glass Fiber Reinforced Composites Including Permanent Strain and Unilateral Effect

This paper presents the development of a theoretical damage mechanics model applicable to random short glass fiber reinforced composites. This model is based on a macroscopic approach using internal variables together with a thermodynamic potential expressed in the stress space. Induced anisotropic damage, nonsymmetric tensile/compressive behavior (unilateral effect) and residual effects (permanent strain) are taken into account. The anisotropic damage is represented with second-order tensorial internal variables D. The unilateral effect due to microcrack closure in compression is introduced by generalizing the hypothesis of the complementary elastic energy equivalence. In the case of the permanent strain, a new term related to frozen energy, which is a function of the damage variable, the stress tensor, and some materials constants to be identified, is added to the basic thermodynamic potential. Using laboratory test results, parameter identification has been performed to illustrate the applicability of the proposed model.