Stress based yield/failure criteria for fiber composites

A macroscopic yield or failure criterion is derived for fiber composite materials. The derivation decomposes naturally into two modes of yield/failure, one being matrix dominated, the other being fiber dominated, thus there are two governing criteria. The resulting forms are quadratic in the components of the average stress tensor with two material parameters for each mode of yield/failure. The physical context of the formulation is that of aligned fiber systems with a polymeric matrix phase under high fiber concentration conditions. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.