Plastic flow and failure of discontinuous-fibre composite materials

Abstract

The stress distribution in a plane discontinuous-fibre composite material having elastic fibres and an elastic-plastic matrix material is obtained for both non-interacting and interacting discontinuities and different degrees of work-hardening. The theoretical predictions, obtained by the finite-element method, are compared with the strain distribution in a model of steel and lead-alloy by the surface-coating photoelastic technique. Composite failure is simulated in the finite-element model and predictions compared with the observations of composite failure made by other workers.