In order to facilitate the application of thermoplastic composites in the automotive industry for weight saving and fuel economy, an advanced simulation approach is applied to evaluate the performance of an injection molded short fiber reinforced composites beam. A fully coupled Digimat with Abaqus homogenization method for multi-scale modeling is explored and compared to an uncoupled Digimat with Abaqus approach which uses an Abaqus User subroutine. A failure model is calibrated to predict short fiber reinforced composites failure. The results obtained with this model are presented, demonstrating accurate prediction results. The developed model with homogenization features is able to distinguish the behavior of beam with different injection molded process and is validated by comparing predicted results with experimental data of beam flexure test under different boundary conditions.
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