Multiscale FE2 elastoviscoplastic analysis of composite structures

This paper discusses modelling of the behaviour of structures reinforced by long fibre SiC/Ti composite material with a periodic microstructure. A new multiscale behaviour model based on a multilevel finite element (FE2) appr oach is used to take into account heterogeneities in the behaviour between the fibre and matrix. It is shown that combining this model with parallel c omputation techniques now makes it possible to consider realistic composite structural computations yielding a detailed geometric description and cons titutive equations giving access to microstructural data, instead of only t o phenomenological macroscopic data difficult to correlate with the local m echanical state. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.