Discrete, meso-scale modeling of fiber- reinforced composites (dm4c): application to additive manufacturing of continuous fiber composites

This study presents the application of a novel, discrete modeling framework for composite materials made via 3-D printing of continuous fibers. Fiber tows are explicitly modeled as Timoshenko beam elements, and the matrix is represented via tetrahedral elements derived from the set of beam nodes. The constitutive law of the matrix is defined at facets which are generated from the tessellation process in the mesh. Vectoral representation of stress and strain on facets provides clear and physics-based material descriptions. A computationally efficient, robust, and highly parallelized scheme is provided to generate the 3-D printed composite parts, which can attain the fiber volume fractions higher than 60 %. The calibration result of the model applied to the 3-D printing composite materials is presented, which demonstrates the capability of the model in capturing the main damage mechanisms of 3D printed composites.