Efficient multiscale simulation approaches for lightweight compact and foamed fiber-reinforced components

To reduce the weight of structural components, foamed fiber-reinforced materials promise gains beyond established composites, particularly for bending loading. One of the main barriers to the wider use of FIM has been the inability to predict the properties of FIM parts with sufficient precision up to now. Based on experimental data, we present a multiscale modeling framework for challenging industry-level structural components. First, we identify a suitable effective medium theory that captures the effect of the pores on the mechanical behavior without the need to model them in the microstructural simulations. Afterwards, an effective macroscopic material model is constructed by generating so-called “materials cards”, which are later used to interpolate effective properties. The material card entries are determined from homogenization problems solved on representative volume elements with resolved fibers, whose generation accounts for the local fiber-length distribution and fiber orientations. Thereby, the novelty of our approach is the extension of material cards to account for both matrix porosity and the fiber orientation. Results of the effective model of the tri-phasic composite are within the experimental spread. Eventually, applications in detailed structural 3D simulation pipelines using commercial tools like Moldflow and Abaqus emphasize the versatility of our framework for real-world applications.