On a Reduced Order Fe-Model to Simulate Nonlinear Material Response in Large Composite Structures

Due to their superior lightweight potential, composites are used in a wide variety of large and slender structures such as gliders, rotor blades of wind turbines or vertical tails of transportation aircrafts. The numerical analysis of these laminated materials typically follows a layer-based approach which describes the stress-strain response of an unidirectional layer within the laminate. Advantages of this method are low experimental characterization costs. The material parameters for an unidirectional layer allow the analysis of arbitrary laminate stackings. In addition, since the position of each layer in the stacking sequence is available, the kinematic behavior of the laminate due to failure of single plies can be predicted accurately in terms of a progressive damage analysis. On the other hand taking material nonlinearities as failure modes, softening, viscoelasticity or plasticity in a