Analysis of new composite architectures

Global/local method in conjunction with a special macro finite element is used to gain computational efficiency in the simulation of textile composites behavior. Results are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. Also, 2D finite elements are used to study boundary effects in plain weave composite specimens subjected to extension, shear, and flexure loads. Effective extension, shear, and flexural moduli were found to be quite sensitive to specimen size. For extension and flexure loads stress distributions were affected by a free surface, but the free surface boundary effect did not appear to propagate very far into the interior. For shear load, the boundary effect appeared to propagate much further into the interior. The report is in the form of two technical articles, the first describes the global/local method while the second describes the use of the 2D finite elements.