Local Stress Distributions in Fiber-Reinforced Composites with Consideration of Thermal Stresses During the Curing Process.

Due to the mismatch of thermal expansion coefficients and effective moduli between fibers and matrix materials, local stress concentrations arise in composites during the curing process from the high preparation temperature to room temperature. To evaluate the effect of thermal residual stresses on local stress distributions in composites, a high-precision microscale model is established in this paper. The numerical results obtained indicate that the thermal residual stresses cannot give rise to plastic strains in the matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]