Numerical material testing based on statistically similar representative volume elements for discontinuous fiber composites

A computational method is proposed for the construction of statistically similar representative volume elements (SSRVEs) for discontinuous fiber composites (DFCs) in order to efficiently calculate material properties based on computational homogenization. The SSRVE is obtained by solving an optimization problem which minimizes differences between the power spectral density of a real target microstructure and the SSRVE. The target microstructure is obtained by means of computed tomography scanning of a DFC plate. As a result of a comparative study, the mechanical behavior of the SSRVE turns out to agree with that of the target microstructure. However, the SSRVE reduces extremely the computational costs of finite element analyses to derive macroscopic material properties of DFCs.