COMPUTER-AIDED MULTISCALE MODELING TOOLS FOR COMPOSITE-MATERIALS AND STRUCTURES

This paper presents recent research efforts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute aimed at developing computer-aided multiscale modeling tools for composite materials and structures aimed at predicting the macrom echanical (overall) structural response, such as critical deformation, vibration and buckling modes, as well as various failure modes on the mesomechanical (lamina) level, such as delamination and ply buckling, and on the micromechanical (the scale of microconstituents) level, su ch as debonding, microbuckling, etc. The building blocks of this techn ology are (i) idealization error estimators aimed at quantifying the q uality of the numerical and mathematical models of composites, (ii) mu ltigrid technology aimed at superconvergent solution of the multiscale computational models, (iii) mathematical homogenization theory aimed at constructing inter-scale transfer operators for rapid and reliable information flow between the scales, (iv) system identification for in situ characterization of the phases and their interface, and (v) mult iscale model construction and visualization.