Microscale material variability and its effect on longitudinal tensile failure of unidirectional carbon fibre composites

This paper deals with modelling the effect of local fibre volume fraction variability, fibre misalignment and fibre strength variability on the longitudinal tensile strength of unidirectional plies with finite element analysis. Variability is accounted for by generating spatially-correlated fields of fibre misalignment and volume fraction. This information is then translated into local mechanical properties and orientations in finite element...