Modeling Fiber Microbuckling in the Bending of Soft Composites Using Nonlinear Homogenization

What is it about?

Composite materials with stiff fibers and a soft matrix can be folded to very high curvatures, which is interesting to design deployable structures, that need to be achieve very compact geometries during launch. However, the fibers microbuckle during bending, which makes modeling complicated. We present a new model that makes use of recent advances in the homogenization of soft composites, and that agrees well with previous experiment. The model can then be used to explore the effect of different parameters, including geometry and material properties.

Featured Image