PhDFibre reinforced plastics are widely used for energy dissipating parts. Due to
their superior strength to density ratio they provide a high performance and
are ideal for lightweight design for crashworthiness. For this, it is essential that
the mechanical behaviour of fibre reinforced composites can be predicted correctly
by simulation. However, due to the complex inner structure, this is still
a challenging task, in particular in case of highly nonlinear crash loading.
In this work, a new purely virtual method is developed, which derives the
complex fibre structure of a filament wound tube by a chain of numerical simulations.
Thereby a finite element simulation of the fibre placement, taking into
account the occurring physical effects, constitutes the fundamental base. Based
on the results of the manufacturing simulation, a 3D fibre architecture is generated
and compared to the real existing structure. The fibre structure, combined
with an automatic matrix implementation algorithm, subsequently provides a
finite element model of the composite on meso-scale. Using micro-scale analysis,
effective material properties for the roving structure, based on filament-matrix
interaction, are derived. Incorporation of the effective properties in a USER
MATERIAL model completes the finite element model generation. The mesoscale
model is subsequently used to analyse the filament wound tube in terms
of quasi-static and crash loading. Finally, the obtained results are compared to
experimental observations
