Response of Quasi-Brittle Materials Reinforced by Short, Aligned Fibers

Pseudo-strain-hardening behavior of quasi-brittle materials reinforced by discontinuous, aligned fibers subjected to uniaxial tension is studied in this paper. An R-curve was used to describe transverse cracking of fiber-reinforced composites. The equivalent inclusion method and Mori-Tanaka theory were used to derive the strain energy release rate of the composites. The proposed model takes into account the influence of fiber distribution. When properties of fiber and matrix are known, the proposed model is capable of predicting whether or not a composite will fail with a single crack or multiple cracks. If a composite fails due to multiple cracks, the model can further predict its pseudo-strain-hardening behavior after the formation of the first transverse crack. The theoretical calculation reasonably matched the experimental results.