BRITTLE-DUCTILE TRANSITION IN FIBER-REINFORCED COMPOSITES

Fiber-reinforced composites are a class of material with increasing in dustrial applications. Computer simulations have been used in order to understand the microscopic mechanism which can explain their mechanic al behavior and several models have been introduced in the last decade . In this paper we introduce a criterion to define the brittle-ductile transition region in unidirectional fiber-reinforced composites. In o rder to simulate a fiber bundle, a recently introduced stochastic mode l is used. The results obtained with our criterion are compared with t hose obtained by using a self-organized criticality (SOC) approach.