A HYBRID VEM/BEM NUMERICAL TECHNIQUE FOR SIMULATING DAMAGE IN COMPOSITE MATERIALS

Composite materials are nowadays widely used in the aerospace sector both for primary and secondary structures for their high mechanical properties and the ability to model them according to project needs. Therefore, accurately predicting material behaviour when subjected to operating loads is extremely important in making the design process more efficient. For this purpose, computational approaches based on continuum damage mechanics have been largely used to study the progressive loss of material integrity due to the propagation and coalescence of microscopic defects. In this contribution, a recently developed hybrid computational technique, which combines the Virtual Element Method (VEM)…