Elastic Deformation of Dispersely Failing Unidirectionally Reinforced Composites

A phenomenological model is proposed for describing the elastic deformation of a unidirectionally reinforced composite capable of accumulating scattered microdamages during its loading. The composite is considered as a homogeneous transversely isotropic solid. Its damaged state at every point is characterized by a centrally symmetric scalar function on the unit sphere (the damage function), which is used to account for variations in the elastic properties of the material during its deformation. The damage itself depends on the history of some equivalent strain, for which four simplified variants are suggested. The relation between strains and stresses is defined in a differential form. Depe…