Coupling Between Experimental Measurements And Numerical Simulation For Fracture Behavior Of Plant Short Fiber Reinforced Composites

With light weight, high fracture strength, degradability and recyclability, theplant short-fiber composite is usually used as interior decorative material inautomobile, train and aircraft. Moreover, it is also some load-bearing parts’ ideal rawmaterial. These features not only improve the energy efficiency of automobile, train,aircraft, but also reduce the consumption of natural resources to meet the urgentrequirements of environmental protection. This paper studies the mechanical behaviorof short fiber composites with digital image correlation method.Firstly, focus on studying the theory of digital image correlation method. Withthe high efficiency, strong portability, fine scalability and ease of maintenance ofMicrosoft Visual Studio2008, and, what’s more, plenty of standard library in VisualC++have been set up which establish the development basis, Therefore, Visual C++2008is a well development tool to compile a digital image correlation methodprogram and correspondingly, a user interface.Secondly, associate the high-resolution CCD with advanced electronic materialstesting machine Instron EP10000to test the fracture mechanics behavior of randomplant short-fiber reinforced polypropylene composite materials specimens. During thetest, with the CCD records a series speckle and/or natural texture images of specimensunder different loads, and observe the crack propagation of the specimen. Whilecalculate the full field displacement of specimens’ surfaces with the digital imagecorrelation method during the experiment.Based upon the precious experiments, couple the test result and the numericalcalculation, which is the coupling method. After establishing a finite element modelcorresponding to the experimental specimens with FEM software, and export theexperience displacement of a certain point on specimen through a piece of programcompiled with VC++, which is conceived as an interface routine. And then it wasimported into the relevant node in FEM model as boundary condition. By far,accomplish the coupling process, consequently, to analyze the fracture mechanicsbehavior of the plant short-fiber reinforced composite through the J-integral which iscalculated accurately by the FEM software based on the achieved full field stress andor strain. This paper supports a procedure associating the digital image correlation anddisplacement model finite element method which is referred as coupling method tocalculate the fracture mechanics parameter of the random short-fiber reinforcedcomposite, such as the J-integral. The research which couples experiment andnumerical method could support reliable analysis data for this type of composite andits structure’s optimization design.