Development of Homogenization Analysis System Based on General-Purpose FEM Code

Microscopic stress analysis of composite materials is important for evaluating the strength of structures made of composite materials. However, there are many cases in which it is impossible to calculate the stresses of heterogeneous composite materials by means of the finite-element method because of the material's complex geometry. Therefore, heterogeneous composite materials are treated as homogeneous materials. A homogenization method has been proposed to evaluate accurately the microscopic stresses of heterogeneous composite materials. We developed a homogenization analysis system based on a general-purpose finite-element method code. To discuss the efficiency and the accuracy of this system, numerical experiments are conducted. This paper presents a basic study to investigate microscopic stresses of soft composite materials.