abstract
- © 2022 Elsevier LtdWith the purpose of serving as a design tool for improving composite material properties, the present work develops a numerical-computational algorithm capable of predicting engineering constants and toughness enhancement due to nanoclay addition to a carbon/epoxy material system. Based on the intersection method, the iterative algorithm finds the critical debonding and shear banding radii, which in turn give the corresponding toughness enhancements as output. In addition, the algorithm requires input data such as homogenized constants and energy release rates as well as stress and displacement fields at the nanoscale, all of them obtained in this work via finite element method-based unit cells. Numerical results for both engineering constants and toughness enhancements show that both phenomena are in effect multi-scale in nature and such results are consistent with the theoretical and experimental results available in the literature.