Investigation of mechanical behavior and damage process of 2D C/SiC composites under cyclic loading: Experiment and simulation

2D woven C/SiC composites exhibit nonlinear mechanical behavior under cyclic loading, accompanied by complex damage processes and failure modes. In this study, the mechanical behavior and damage process of 2D C/SiC composites under cyclic loading were investigated by experimental and numerical methods. First, loading-unloading experiments were conducted. The damage evolution of the composites was monitored using acoustic emission (AE) and digital image correlation (DIC), and the damage modes were identified through k-means cluster analysis: matrix cracking [0–180 kHz], fiber pull-out [180–290 kHz], interface debonding [290–390 kHz], and fiber breakage [430–900 kHz]. Then, an anisotropic elastic-plastic damage constitutive model was proposed and implemented with an implicit solution method via a user-defined subroutine (UMAT) in ABAQUS. The stress-strain curve of the composites under cyclic loading was analyzed, and the evolution processes of residual strain and unloading modulus were characterized. Additionally, the damage process and failure modes of the composites were examined based on simulation results. The predicted results from the model showed good agreement with experimental observations.