Mechanical analysis of 3-D braided composites by the finite multiphase element method

A finite multiphase element method (FMEM), in which the element comprises more than one kind of material, has been proposed to predict the effective elastic properties of 3-D braided composites. This method is based on the variational principle and our previous geometric model that assumes the existence of different types of unit cells in the three regions in a 3-D braided composite, i.e. the interior, surface and corner. The numerical procedure involved two steps. First, a fine local mesh at the unit cell level is used to analyze the stress/strain of each unit cell. Then, a relatively coarse global mesh is used to obtain the overall responses of the composite at macroscopic level. By using the stress volume averaging method, the effective elastic properties of the composite can be calculated under the prescribed uniform strain boundary conditions. Finally, the predicted stress/strain curves are compared with experimental results, demonstrating the applicability of the FME method.