Virtual testing of mechanical response of composite plates with normally distributed wrinkles

Abstract In this paper, a new method combined three-dimensional finite element method (FEM) with heterogeneity model of wrinkles was presented to predict the mechanical response of orthotropic plates under four different loading conditions: transverse compression, axial tension, bending and shearing. The effective elastic properties disturbed by wrinkles are determined based on a mesomechanics model and a homogenization technique. The computation combining heterogeneous wrinkles can be considered as a virtual test since it allows every computation to produce a different result according to different shapes, sizes and locations of wrinkles, which are believed to obey the normal and random distribution, respectively. It was found that the in-plane displacements of plates increase dramatically when the heterogeneity wrinkle model is considered. The fluctuant displacement fields of the plate under axial tensile load can be clearly observed, and the distortion of displacement contours becomes serious with the increment of standard deviation of normally distributed wrinkle defects. Also, the statistical characteristics of mechanical response corresponding to different standard deviations were obtained according to multiple computations.