Multicontinuum Analysis of Fiber Microbuckling in Elastic Memory Composite Structures

The rapidly growing acceptance of Elastic Memory Composite (EMC) materials for deployable space structures illustrates the fact that EMC materials offer substantial performance improvements over existing spaceflight-qualified materials. This growing acceptance has, however, revealed a pressing need for further advancement of models to accurately predict key, non-classical, aspects of the material’s behavior. A critical deformation mechanism dominating the bending response of EMC materials at elevated temperatures is fiber microbuckling occurring within the softened resin. This paper will focus on analysis efforts aimed at predicting the geometric nonlinear response of EMC materials loaded in bending including fiber microbuckling. The analysis is based on a finite strain (Lagrangian) micromechanics analysis of a lamina in bending with an initial fiber waviness. Comparison of analytical predictions to experimental results for structural applications are provided.