Response of quasi-brittle materials reinforced by short, aligned fibers

Pseudo-strain-hardening behavior of quasi-brittle materials reinforced by d iscontinuous, aligned fibers subjected to uniaxial tension is studied in th is paper. An R-curve was used to describe transverse cracking of fiber-rein forced composites. The equivalent inclusion method and Mori-Tanaka theory w ere used to derive the strain energy release rate of the composites. The pr oposed model takes into account the influence of fiber distribution. When p roperties of fiber and matrix are known, the proposed model is capable of p redicting whether or not a composite will fail with a single crack or multi ple cracks. If a composite fails due to multiple cracks, the model can furt her predict its pseudo-strain-hardening behavior after the formation of the first transverse crack. The theoretical calculation reasonably matched the experimental results.