Predicting damage in thick fibre reinforced composite structures typically involves discretising the geometry with a fine mesh of (three dimensional) 3D solid elements. Generating a 3D solid mesh for a composite structure with complex geometry can be time consuming, which makes this contiguous mesh approach inefficient. The embedded element technique offers a computationally efficient alternative by allowing the constituents, in this case the fibre reinforcement and the matrix, to be meshed independently and more quickly. The displacements of the two constituents are fused together, thereby, representing the stiffness of the composite. In the current study the embedded element technique is coupled with a 3D Continuum Damage Mechanics (CDM) model to simulate damage in a quasi-isotropic open hole specimen. The numerical predictions showed excellent correlation with the experimental failure strength and the predicted failure mode.
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