One of the most famous methods to predict the stiffness of short fiber composites is micromechanical modeling. In this study, a Representative Volume Element (RVE) of a beech wood flour natural composite has been designed and the orientation averaging approach has been utilized to predict its stiffness tensor. The novelty of this work is in finding the proper fiber orientation distribution func...

Biomimetic Sensor Modeling and Simulations for Flight Control of a Micromechanical Flying Insect

In this paper, a four-bar mechanism with two flexible links is proposed to be used in a micromechanical flying insect robot wing thorax design for stroke amplification. PZT5H and PZN-PT based unimorph actuators are utilized at the input link of the four-bar. The kinematics and dynamics of the proposed wing strcuture with two parallel four-bar mechanisms are analyzed, and DC forces generated at ...

Modeling progressive damage in composite materials and structures poses considerable challenges because damage is, in general, complex and involves multiple modes such as delamination, transverse cracking, fiber breakage, fiber pullout, etc. Clearly, damage in composites can be investigated at different length scales, ranging from the micromechanical to the macromechanical specimen and structur...

The presented work depicts results of a two-scale approach to the problem of damage and failure prediction on laminated composite structures. Modeling on the micro-level has enabled insight into the underlying physical processes which lead to homogenized properties of the macro-scale material. In this work, micromechanical analysis has been performed by application of the High Fidelity Generali...