Homogenization of composite materials reinforced with unidirectional fibres with complex curvilinear cross section: a virtual element approach

Abstract

The paper presents an augmented curvilinear virtual element method to determine homogenized in-plane shear material moduli of long-fibre reinforced composites in the framework of asymptotic homogenization method. The new virtual element combine an exact representation of the curvilinear computational geometry for complex fibre cross section shapes through an innovative two-dimensional cubature suite for NURBS-like polygonal domains. A selection of representative numerical tests supports the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed approach for both doubly periodic and random fibre arrangement with matrix domain.

Keywords

• material homogenization
• fibre reinforced composite
• low-cardinality algebraic cubature
• pi (positive interior) rules
• curvilinear polygons
• nurbs
• virtual element method