Off-Axis Tensile Test and Numerical Simulation of Unidirectional Thermoplastic Composite Laminates

Abstract

As a high-performance thermoplastic composite material, AS4/PEEK has been widely used in aerospace, military, automotive, and other fields. After conducting the off-axial tensile test of unidirectional AS4/PEEK laminates with different angles, the relevant stress-strain curves and tensile strengths, as well as fracture plane angles are obtained. In simulation, a 3D elastic-plastic model where the parameters are determined by trust-region reflective algorithm is used to describe the nonlinear mechanical behavior of AS4/PEEK laminates. In combination with the LaRC05 criterion and the crack zone theory, a user material subroutine VUMAT based on Abaqus is developed and applied to the numerical simulation of off-axis tensile test. The numerical results show that the 3D elastic-plastic damage constitutive model can accurately simulate the plastic effect of AS4/PEEK laminates and the tensile strength predicted by the numerical method agrees well with those from the test. The proposed 3D elastic-plastic damage model provides an accurate and effective method for the comprehensive analysis of plastic deformation and damage of thermoplastic composites.

Keywords

• as4/peek
• off-axial tension
• plastic model
• larc05
• crack band theory