Failure envelopes for laminated composites by the parametric HFGMC micromechanical framework

Micromechanically doubly periodic parametric High Fidelity Generalized Method of Cells, in conjunctions with continuum damage mechanics considerations, is presented to determine failure envelopes of unidirectional composite materials. The methods is based on an incremental procedure in which the local damage variables and global stresses are monitored during the strain softening to provide the value of the envelopes at which ultimate failure occurs. The micromechanically established failure envelopes are compared with the well known macrolevel based failure surfaces and with experimental data of multiaxial failure stresses found in the literature. It is shown that the new micromechanical failure envelopes are effective in predicting the multi-axis stress failures.