Micromechanical simulations of biaxial yield, hardening and plastic flow in short glass fiber reinforced polyamide

Mean-field homogenization (MFH) is used to predict the biaxial yield behavior, hardening and plastic flow of composite materials made of an elasto-plastic matrix reinforced with misaligned short fibers. The procedure is applied to short glass fiber reinforced polyamide, which represents an important industrial application of those composites. First, MFH is verified against full-field accurate finite element simulations of representative volume elements with multiple fibers. Next, a parametric study is carried out with MFH in order to predict the biaxial plastic behavior of numerous microstructures corresponding to various values of volume fraction, aspect ratio and second-rank orientation tensor components of the glass fibers. Results demonstrate the loss of both isotropic hardening and plastic flow normality, except for 2D random orientation. For illustration, a fit of Hill's orthotropic plasticity criterion is conducted for several orientation tensors.