Modeling of Hybrid Composite Failure

Antoine Lefèvre

Modeling of Hybrid Composite Failure

Author(s)	Prof. Antoine Lefèvre
Country	United States
Abstract	Hybrid fiber-reinforced polymer composites combine two or more reinforcement systems to obtain combinations of stiffness, strength, failure strain, toughness, weight, and cost that cannot be achieved readily with a single reinforcement. Their failure prediction remains challenging because local constituent damage, fiber-strength variability, matrix nonlinearity, interface degradation, ply cracking, delamination, and laminate-level stress redistribution interact across several characteristic length scales. This study develops a simulation-based framework for multiscale modeling of progressive failure in carbon/glass hybrid polymer composites. The proposed architecture connects constituent-scale representative volume elements with ply-scale constitutive damage and laminate-scale finite-element analysis. Matrix plasticity and cracking, carbon- and glass-fiber damage, fiber–matrix interface degradation, intralaminar ply failure, and interlaminar delamination are represented through separate but coupled state variables. Homogenized stress and strain fields provide scale transfer from microscale to mesoscale, while degraded ply properties and cohesive-interface behavior determine structural response at the laminate scale. A comparative simulation indicates that increasingly resolved modeling strategies reduce illustrative failure-load error from 14.8% for a conventional single-scale criterion to 3.8% for an adaptive two-way multiscale framework, although normalized computational cost increases by more than an order of magnitude. Simulated damage evolution shows early matrix deterioration, followed by interface and delamination growth, accelerated low-elongation carbon-fiber failure, and delayed high-elongation glass-fiber damage. The framework also demonstrates that hybrid effects cannot be predicted from constituent rule-of-mixtures properties alone because fiber-strength scatter, local stress concentrations, dispersion, stacking sequence, ply thickness, and load redistribution influence progressive failure. The study concludes that multiscale modeling offers its greatest value when scale refinement is applied selectively to critical zones rather than uniformly throughout an entire structure. Experimental qualification should combine mechanical testing with full-field strain measurement, acoustic emission, fracture inspection, and microstructural characterization to validate not only ultimate failure loads but also the predicted sequence and location of damage mechanisms.
Keywords	hybrid composites, multiscale modeling, progressive failure, carbon/glass composites, representative volume element, continuum damage mechanics, delamination, finite-element analysis
Field	Engineering
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 4, July-August 2026
Published On	2026-07-20

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American Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Innovation and Research

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Modeling of Hybrid Composite Failure

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