Inelastic and Failure Analysis of Laminate Structures by ABAQUS Incorporated with a General Constitutive Relationship

A general constitutive relationship for describing the inelastic and strength behavior of laminated composites reinforced with various fiber preforms was presented in References [1,2]. The relationship is consistent in that when the fiber disappears or becomes the same as the matrix, the nonlinear constitutive equations of the resulting composite deteriorate to those of the isotropic matrix material. One of the best benefits of the constitutive relationship is that all the formulas involved are in explicit form and only the properties of the constituent fiber and matrix of the composite are required as input material data. This will significantly simplify a finite element analysis for a laminated structure. In the present paper, the general constitutive relationship for tape laminates was programmed into a user subroutine, UGENS, of the commercial finite element (FE) software ABAQUS. Several laminated structures including a complicated bone plate were then analyzed, and good correlation between the numerical results and available experimental data was found. A list of the original computer code together with an input data file was summarized in the appendixes of the paper.