Numerical investigation of scale factor in composites applying extended finite element method

In recent years, composite materials have been widely used in several applications due to their superior mechanical properties including high strength, high stiffness and low density. Despite the remarkable advancements in developing theoretical and computational methods for analyzing composites, investigating the effect of scale factor on the strength and damage behavior of composites still remains an active field of research. Some computational efforts has been reported to investigate how composites strength change relative to scale factor. Conventional continuum mechanic methods are not able to calculate the effect of scale factor on composites strength. Applying continuum damage mechanic methods can incorporate this factor. In this paper, it is shown that combining extended finite element and cohesive zone modeling methods leads to developing an efficient numerical framework to study the scale factor for composites strength. The procedure is starting from a two plies laminate and then increasing the laminate thickness to investigate how strength changes with the scale factor. Prediction of composites failure strength has always been an essential study in aerospace research areas. Defining this innovative combination of extended finite element and cohesive zone modeling methods can help researchers to reduce expensive experiments by replacing reliable results from computational analyses.