Numerical study on creep damage of composites at high temperature

A unit cell model is applied to study the creep damage behavior after fiber fractures in the fiber-reinforced composites at high temperature. The user subroutine CREEP has been programmed for ABAQUS. The fiber breakage results in a new crack. The results show that the stress concentration factor resulted from the fiber breakage increases with the creep time. The creep damage takes place near the crack, and then grows in the matrix along a certain angle, up to the total failure. The influences of the ratio of modulus of the fiber to the matrix (E_f/E_m) on the creep deformation, damage and stress distributions have been studied. With the increasing E_f/E_m, the damage in the matrix increases. Analysis on the different ductility of matrix shows that the creep damage of low ductile matrix composites is higher than high ductile matrix composites.