An elastic-plastic damage model for long-fiber thermoplastics

This article proposes an elastic-plastic damage model that combines micromechanical modeling with continuum damage mechanics to predict the stress-strain response of injection-molded long-fiber thermoplastics. The model accounts for distributions of orientation and length of elastic fibers embedded in a thermoplastic matrix whose behavior is elastic-plastic and damageable. The elastic-plastic damage behavior of the matrix is described by the modified Ramberg-Osgood relation and the 3D damage model in deformation assuming isotropic hardening. Fiber/matrix debonding is accounted for using a parameter that governs the fiber/matrix interface compliance. A linear relationship between this parameter and the matrix damage variable is assumed. First, the elastic-plastic damage behavior of the reference aligned fiber composite containing the same fiber volume fraction and length distribution as the actual composite is computed using an incremental Eshelby-Mori-Tanaka mean field approach. The incremental response of the latter is then obtained from the solution for the aligned-fiber composite by averaging over all fiber orientations. The model is validated against the experimental stress-strain results obtained for long-glass-fiber/polypropylene specimens.