A coupled FEM/PD based on substructure method for progressive damage analysis of composite laminate

A new method of coupling finite element method (FEM) and peridynamics (PD) is proposed to analyze the progressive damage of fiber reinforced composite laminate. The computational efficiency of FEM is higher than peridynamics. But peridynamics is good at calculating discontinuous solution. In order to exert the advantages of the above two methods, the solution is divided into three parts. In the dangerous region, peridynamics is adopted. And FEM is used in the non-dangerous region. The remaining region is the coupling FEM/PD region, where the peridynamics particles are interacted with neighboring finite element nodes each other. And the contribution stiffness of FEM and peridynamics particles can be written in the global stiffness matrix together. The substructure method is also used to reduce computational effort further. The progressive damage and failure modes of composite laminates under a tensile load can be successfully analyzed. It is shown that this proposed method had a great potential to analyze the mechanical behavior of composites.