Net irreversible synergistic effects of environmental deterioration on fatigue and flexure properties of fiber reinforcement composite: A homogenization based model

This study aims to simulate net irreversible environmental deterioration and demonstrate its role in changing the residual fatigue and flexure performance in cross-ply composites. The paper develops an experimentally-validated 3D multiphysics model at structural level and gets this homogenization-based model to identify each of the degradation mechanisms observed in the experimental data and to analyze the differences that the various degradation mechanisms might make to the properties and durability of the environmental aged composite materials. Sensitivity analyses are conducted to investigate the effect of mesh density on the accuracy of functions homogenized from micromechanical models. The aging–fatigue–bend model with respect to two different deterioration mechanism assumptions is developed and analyzed. Research shows that models with homogeneous damage assumptions allow higher feasibility and convergence when aging concurrently with complicated mechanical loading, while models with surface erosion assumptions describe the real deterioration mechanism more precisely and offer more freedom, especially when the environmental aging condition is more complicated.