IMPACT ON 3D CARBON CARBON COMPOSITES - A MESOSCALE APPROACH/

A method for the fracture prediction under dynamic loading of small st ructures made of a 3D Carbon/Carbon composite is proposed. Due to the length scale of the loading, the notion of a homogenized material is m eaningless; our choice herein is to model, identify and compute the ma terial at an intermediate or meso scale (fibre strands - matrix blocks ). Our idea is that, due to the smallness of the meso scale, the previ ous description of the damage mechanisms should be valid even for high -rate loading. This meso-modelling is based on static and dynamic test s. Changing scale methods are applied to identify the mesoscopic model parameters (damage - plasticity - porosity) from static tests. The re sults from the dynamic computing of plate/plate tests confirm this met hod.