Towards a micromechanics-based damage mesomodel for CFRP laminates under thermomechanical cyclic loading

One computational approach for studying damage in laminated composites is the damage mesomodel for laminates (DML) which has been developed for more than fifteen years, particularly at LMT-Cachan. Recently, we introduced micro-meso relations which prove that this mesomodel is compatible with classical micromechanical analysis and, therefore, can be viewed as a homogenized version of classical theories on the microscale. An enhanced damage mesomodel which includes the description of microcracking under static loading, compatible with classical micromechanics, was developed with this approach. Here, we develop an alternative model of microcracking under fatigue. No specific damage law for fatigue microcracking is introduced. We assume that diffuse damage alone is involved and that its evolution leads to a decrease in the critical microcracking energy release rate, which can be taken into account on the mesoscale thanks to the micro-meso relations.