Thermo-Mechanical Damage Modeling of Polymer Matrix Composite Structures in Fire

The overall objective of this research is to develop a modeling and simulation approach to predict the thermo-mechanical damage of composite materials subjected to fire environments. A three-dimensional thermal damage model is developed for glass-reinforced polymer composite materials subject to high temperature and radiative environments. Homogenization methods are used to determine the properties of damaged material in terms of the volume fractions associated with composite fiber, resin, and char and their individual phase properties. The thermal damage model is implemented in Abaqus via an overlaid element approach and extended to a thermo-mechanical damage model. The solution of the mechanical response is determined based on the existing capabilities in Abaqus with material and geometry nonlinearities. The thermal response of the laminated composite material is studied first. Consistent agreement in temperature is obtained between the numerical predictions and experimental data. The extended thermo-mechanical damage model is then applied to the sandwich structure of composite laminates subject to radiative heating and compressive loading. The predictions of temperature field match very well with experimental data. In addition, the predicted delamination pattern and time-to-failure are in reasonable agreement with the experimental data