Design analysis of composite laminate structures for light-weight armored vehicle by homogenization method

This project is in support of the US Army TACOM Composite Armored Vehicle (CAV) program and in collaboration with the University of Michigan to verify and build confidence on the homogenization analysis method of composite laminates for armored vehicles. The standard homogenization method is modified by applying the weighted material constants of the laminae of a laminate in order to reflect the nature of bending, when it is applied to form an equivalent homogenized laminate model with a single lamina. The weighting procedure is applied to the material constants through the thickness direction in which the periodic condition for the standard homogenization method is not assumed. This procedure makes appropriate change in the global stiffness of the two-dimensional homogenized single layer laminate in bending, while the unit cell model for the homogenization method is a three-dimensional. In this work, we shall describe a formulation of the weighted homogenization method together with several numerical examples to examine the validity of the present method with respect to the classical lamination theory, the first-order shear deformation theory, and the full three-dimensional elasticity.