MPM SIMULATION OF INTERFACIAL FRACTURE BEHAVIOR IN FOAM CORE COMPOSITE SANDWICH BEAMS WITH CHOPPED-FIBER ENHANCED INTERFACE

The experimental results of the interfacial toughness of foam core composite sandwich beams with chopped-fiber enhanced interface were discussed in detail, and the experimental process was numerically simulated based on the material point method (MPM). For the sake of handling cracks in numerical simulation, MPM algorithm with cracks was developed, in which discontinuity was introduced into MPM by visibility rule. The interfacial fracture process of the experiment was simulated by MPM, and good accordance was found between the numerical results and that of the experiment. Overall, the study indicates that the chopped-fiber enhancement technique can significantly promote the interfacial toughness as well as the interfacial load capacity of foam core composite sandwich structures, and that the MPM algorithm with cracks presented in this paper is efficiency and accuracy for a fracture analysis.