Elastoplastic damage micromechanics for continuous fiber-reinforced ductile matrix composites with progressive fiber breakage

An elastoplastic damage micromechanical framework considering evolutionary fiber breakage is proposed to predict the overall material behaviors of continuous fiber-reinforced composites with ductile matrix under external loading. In the present work, we assume that the overall nonlinear behavior of a composite is primarily attributed to the plastic deformation in the matrix as well as the damage evolution due to fiber breakage. The effective elastoplastic deformations are governed by means of the effective yield surface derived from a representative microstructure with elastic fibers embedded in an elastoplastic matrix material. The matrix behaves elastically or plastically depending on the local stress, and the effective elastoplastic deformation obeys the associative plastic flow rule and isotropic hardening law. In addition, taking advantage of the eigenstrain due to fiber breakage together with a Weibull statistic model, the evolutionary fiber breakage mechanism is effectively predicted. Finally, the overall elastoplastic stress–strain responses are reached under the framework of micromechanics and damage mechanics. Comparisons between the proposed theoretical predictions and experimental data are performed to illustrate the capability of the proposed framework. In particular, the proposed model is employed to investigate the overall uniaxial and axisymmetric elastoplastic stress–strain responses of the continuous fiber-reinforced metal matrix composites. Studies of the initial yield surfaces at various damage levels are conducted as well.