International RILEM Conference on Material Science MATSCI, Aachen 2010 Vol.

II, HetMat 113

A VARIATIONAL APPROACH TO HOMOGENIZATION OF
COMPOSITES WITH DEBONDING INTERFACES
P. Gruber, J. Zeman, Dpt. of Mechanics, Fac. of Civil Engineering, CTU in Prague, Czech Republic
ABSTRACT: Failure in fiber-reinforced composites is often initiated at the fiber-matrix
interface; the load-induced debonding phenomenon is therefore of a crucial importance when
assessing the overall behavior of composite structures. Numerical modeling of interfacial
behavior within the framework of displacement-based (primal) Finite Element method is
usually based on interfacial elements, which suffer from a poor conditioning of the stiffness
matrix when modeling (almost) rigid interfaces. To overcome this difficulty, in the current
contribution we investigate an applicability of duality-based solvers to the homogenization of
composites with imperfect interfacial bonding characterized by a piecewise linear softening
law. The basic theoretical framework is provided by the first-order strain-based
homogenization theories and by the incremental energy-based formulation of the debonding
process. The alternate minimization strategy due to Bourdin [Bou07] is employed to solve the
resulting optimization problem, with the Finite Element Tearing and Interconnecting (FETI)
method [Far91] implementing the elastic energy minimization. The performance of the
resulting algorithms is demonstrated by a case study of a hexagonal unit cell and the results
are compared against an independent linearization method proposed by Rots in [Rot01].
1 INTRODUCTION
Particle-reinforced composites, and the fibrous composites in particular, present a progressive
class of materials with a steadily increasing importance in virtually all areas of structural
engineering, e.g., [Cox06]. It is now generally accepted that one of the key factors governing
their mechanical performance is the interfacial debonding: the partial separation of
reinforcements from matrix phase when the surface tractions locally exceed the interfacial
strength. Therefore, a considerable amount of research effort has been invested into the
development of a realistic model for debonding-induced damage processes in heterogeneous
media in the field of materials science and engineering. Our approach is based on
computational homogenization methods, in which we determine the detailed distribution of
local fields within a characteristic heterogeneity pattern of the analyzed composite, usually
represented by a Periodic Unit Cell (PUC), employing a suitable discretization technique.
In the context of the debonding behaviour, the most frequent and versatile approach is based
on the primal variant of the Finite Element Method (FEM), e.g., [Db00, Mat07]. The
interfacial behaviour is in this case modelled in the form of a traction-separation constitutive
law, with the interfacial stiffness as the basic material parameter. Such concept, however,
inevitably leads to problems for the perfect particle/matrix bonding, which formally
corresponds to the infinite value of interfacial stiffness. In the actual implementation, the
perfect bonding case is approximated using a large penalty-like term, deteriorating the
conditioning of the numerical problem manifested in spurious traction oscillations and hence
inaccurate prediction of damage initiation, see e.g. [Are08] for a recent overview. The finite
interfacial stiffness, on the other hand, allows for mutual interpenetration of individual
constituents, resulting in a non-physical distribution of some of mechanical fields within
a composite.
114 GRUBER, ZEMAN: A Variational Approach to Homogenization of Composites with Debonding Interfaces
In this contribution, we present an efficient approach to numerical solution of unit cell
problem for composite materials with damaging interfaces based on duality-based methods
and energetic formulation of the debonding process. In particular, following Kovara et al
[Ko06], we start with reformulating the inelastic deformation process in the form of
an incremental minimization of reversible and dissipated energy. The resulting optimization
problem is discretized using the Finite Element Method and converted into its dual form
based on the Finite Element Tearing and Interconnecting algorithm [Far91], extended to
account for additional compliance due to imperfect interfaces [Kru08]. It should be
emphasized that the main motivation for the application of the FETI algorithm is not due to
large size of the resulting linear system, but mainly because of efficient resolution of
frictionless contact problem and alleviation of the spurious traction oscillations. This is
demonstrated by a model problem of debonding of a hexagonal unit cell. As an independent
verification, the macroscopic stress-strain curves are compared with the results of the
sequentially linear analysis introduced by Rotts in [Rot01].
2 ENERGY-BASED APPROACH TO DEBONDING COMPOSITES
2.1 Interfacial constitutive model
We start with a formulation of an interfacial constitutive law for linearly softening interfaces
based on a well-established cohesive model introduced by Camacho and Ortiz in [Cam06]. To
then end, consider an interface with a local coordinate system defined by axes n and t. The
constitutive description is then based on an effective displacement jump
2 2 2 2
[ ] [ ]
n t
u u = + , (2.1)
where e.g. [ ]
n
u denotes the normal component of the displacement jump [ ] u and is a mode
mixity parameter. The reversibly stored interfacial energy is then provided by
( ) ( )
int 2 2
2
1 1 1
, ,
2 2
c
c
G
e k

= = (2.2)
with denoting the damage parameter, ranging from 0 (perfect interface) to 1 (fully damaged
interface), and G
c
is the fracture energy needed to fully damage a perfect interface,
cf. Figure 2.1. Note that Eq. (2.1) can be equivalently interpreted as energy of an elastic
spring with -dependent stiffness, ranging from k (no displacement jump) to 0 k
(complete separation).
Following e.g. [Mie04], the dissipative processes at the interface are quantified using the
dissipation distance function, which for the current model attains a simple form
( )
( )
int 2 1 1 2
1 2
if ,
,
otherwise,
c
G
d



=

(2.3)
International RILEM Conference on Material Science MATSCI, Aachen 2010 Vol. II, HetMat 115
where the term corresponds to the unidirectionality of damage evolution (i.e. the material
cannot heal once it is damaged). For illustration, in Figure 2.1 we plot the traction-separation
graph, where the equivalent traction ( ) T follows from the minimization of stored and
dissipated energy as presented later in Section 2.3. Note that strength of the interface
c
,
appearing in Figure 2.1 can be directly linked to the previously introduced parameters and
that finite initial stiffness can modelled by assigning a certain initial damage
in
to the
interface.

Fig. 2.1. Interfacial traction-separation law.
2.2 Energetics of the unit cell problem
Having introduced an irreversible constitutive model for the interface, we now proceed with
the formulation of the unit cell problem, governing the response of a representative sample of
the analyzed composite materials. The geometry of a representative Periodic Unit Cell (PUC)
is schematically shown in Figure 2.2, defining also the notation used in the remainder of this
section.

Fig. 2.2. Domain decomposition of a periodic unit cell.
In the framework of adopted first order homogenization theories [Mic99, Kou01], the
displacement field u in the i-th domain admits the following decomposition
( )
( ) ( )
( )
( )
( ) *
, , , ,
i i i
t t t = + u x E x u x x (2.4)
116 GRUBER, ZEMAN: A Variational Approach to Homogenization of Composites with Debonding Interfaces
where ( ) t E denotes the prescribed macroscopic displacement and u
*(i)
is the periodic
fluctuating field arising due to heterogeneities. Similarly to the previous section, we first
define the stored energy functional
( ) ( )
( )
( )
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
( )
( )
( )
( )
int
* * *( ) *( ) int
s s
1
*( )
s
1
1
, ,[ ], : : d + [ ] , d
2
: : d ,
i
i
n
i i i
i
n
i i
i
E t e
t

=

=

=
+

u u u x C u x u x x
u x C E
(2.5)
quantifying the reversibly stored energy in the PUC, when subject to an admissible (possibly
discontinuous) displacement field
*
u in the bulk, displacement jumps
s
*
u
(i)
at damaged
internal interfaces with the amount of damage quantified by variable . Since all inelastic
processes have been reduced to the interface only, the dissipation distance contains only the
surfasic contribution:
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
int
int
1 2 1 2
, , . D d d

x x (2.6)
In Eqs. (2.5) and (2.6), all arguments are assumed to be taken from the corresponding sets of
admissible internal variables and kinematical quantities. In the current case, the first set is
defined as
( ) ( ) { }
int
: 0 1 for Z = x x x (2.7)
and the displacements and their jumps are constrained to
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
( )
( ) ( )
( )
( ) int
int
,[ ] : is -periodic,[ ] 0 for ,
,
[ ]
i
i
i n
K

=

=


u x u x u x u x n x x
u u u
(2.8)
incorporating the periodicity of the fluctuating displacement, frictionless contact conditions at
internal interfaces and compatibility between the bulk displacements and displacement jumps,
respectively.
2.3 Time incremental formulation
In order to track evolution of individual fields for a given loading path ( ) t E , we discretize
the time interval to N time steps, i.e.
0 1
0
N
t t t = < < < K . At time t
k
, the sought fields
( ) ( )
* *
,[ ] [ ]
k k k k
t t = = u u u u and ( )
k k
t = follow from the incremental minimization
problem [Mie04]
( ) ( ) ( )
1 ( ,[ ], )
,[ ] , arg min , ,[ ], , ,
k k k k k K Z
E t D

= +
u u
u u u u (2.9)
the solution of which needs to be found by an appropriate numerical method.
International RILEM Conference on Material Science MATSCI, Aachen 2010 Vol. II, HetMat 117
2.4 Spatial discretization
In the current work, we discretize the minimization problem (2.9) using the simplest Finite
Element approximation function; in particular, piecewise linear functions for displacements
and displacement jumps and constant basis functions for interfacial damage. When enforcing
the kinematical constraints (2.8) at element nodes discretely by the Lagrange multipliers, we
obtain the discretized version of the objective function in the form
( )
( ) ( ) ( )
( )
( )
T T ( ) int,
1
T ( ) T T ( )
1 1
1 1

,[ ] , , [ ] [ ]
2 2

[ ] .
n
h i h i h i h h h h h h i h h h
k
i
n n
h i h i h h h h i h h
k
i i
L
=
= =
= + +

+ +

u u u K u u K u
u f b B u u
(2.10)
In Eq. (2.10), e.g.
( )

h i
u designates the displacement nodal degrees of freedom related to the i-
th domain,
( ) h i
K is the standard positive-semidefinite stiffness matrix of the i-th domain,
( ) h i
k
f is the force vector due to initial strain E and the Boolean matrix
( ) h i
B enforces the
compatibility between the domain-based displacements and the interface-related jumps. The
interface-related matrices are defined for the e-th element in the form
( ) ( ) ( )
T
[ ], [ ], 2
1
1 d , ,

e
h h h h h c
e e u e u e e e c h
e c
G
b G



= =



K N x N x (2.11)
where
[ ],
h
u e
N refer to the linear basis functions and is a mode mixity matrix. Then, the fully
discrete version of (2.10) reads as
( ) ( ) ( )
1

( ,[ ] )

,[ ] , , arg min min max ,[ ] , ,

h h h h h
k
h h h h h h h h h
k k k k k
L

=
u u
u u u u
0
(2.12)
which presents a large-scale non-convex optimization problem to be solved. Following
[Bou07], we adopt an alternate minimization strategy and update the internal variables and
displacements sequentially, until they converge to identical values in two consecutive
iterations. The outer loop of the optimization problem can be then solved locally at the
element level, while the internal optimization problem can be efficiently solved using FETI-
based approaches, as briefly outlined in the next section.
2.5 Numerical treatment based on duality-based solvers
To simplify the exposition, we drop the constraint
h
0 as it has been shown previously in
[Gru08] that it can be handled reasonably well by a simple projection technique (i.e. setting
positive values equal to zero at the end of one loop). Then, the problem (2.12) becomes well-
suited to the application of the FETI method introduced by Farhat and Roux [Far91].
Following the standard dualization procedure, we eliminate from Eq. (2.12) the displacement-
based quantities and reduce the original problem to interfaces only, see e.g. [Kru07] for
additional details. The resulting system of linear equations for the coarse problem attains the
form
T
,
h h h h h
h h
+
=


F H G g
G 0 0
(2.13)
118 GRUBER, ZEMAN: A Variational Approach to Homogenization of Composites with Debonding Interfaces
with the individual sub-matrices defined as
( )
1
( ) ( ) ( )T int,
1
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
1 1
, ,
, .
n
h h i h i h i h h
i
n n
h h i h i h i h h i h i h i
i i

=
= =
= =
= =

F B K B H K
G B K R g B K f
(2.14)
The new terms appearing in Eqs. (2.13) and (2.14) are the pseudoinverse of the stiffness
matrix
( ) h i
K , matrix
( ) h i
R storing the basis for rigid body modes of the i-th domain and
vector
h
corresponds to degrees of freedom related to rigid-body modes. Therefore,
analogously to [Kru08], we observe that the effect of imperfect interfaces in (2.13) appears as
an additional contribution of the compliance matrix
h
H to the standard system matrix of the
FETI method. For (almost) perfect bonding at the onset of damage process, the influence of
this term is small and the modified method becomes equivalent to the original FETI
algorithm. The case of fully damaged interfaces can be treated using the static condensation
e.g. [Gru08]. Moreover, note that the system (2.13) can be very efficiently solved when
employing the projected gradient algorithm [Far91, Kru07].
Upon convergence of the conjugate gradient iterative solver, the displacement jumps are
obtained as
[ ]
h h h
= u H (2.15)
and used in the next outer iteration of (2.12) to update the values of the damage parameter.
3 NUMERICAL RESULTS
To briefly demonstrate the basic feature of the proposed numerical scheme, we consider a
two-dimensional hexagonal PUCs with 50% of circular fibers with the diameter of 10 m in
the plane strain state. A uniform triangular mesh with approximately 1,900 nodes is employed
for the spatial discretization of the problem. The material properties of individual phases and
interface appear in Table 3.1 (note that interfaces with two different critical openings are
considered) and the PUC is subjected to a bi-axial tensile/compressive strain path
characterized by
( ) [ ] 0.02 0.02 0 , 0 1. t t t = E (2.16)
It should be emphasized, however, that the predictive capacities of the current model are
somewhat limited by the adopted two-dimensional setting and in practical predictions, the
model should be extended to fully three-dimensional stress state.
International RILEM Conference on Material Science MATSCI, Aachen 2010 Vol. II, HetMat 119
In addition to the time-incremental formulation, we also present the results of an independent
linearization procedure, in particular the sequentially linear analysis (SLA) proposed by Rots
in [Rot01]. The method is based on an analogy with the weakest link simulations in discrete
media and involves three simple steps. First, the distribution of unknown fields is determined
for t=1. Next, the interfacial element with the highest damage affinity is found at the load is
scaled to a value t
k
, for which the interfacial strength is reached. Third, the damage parameter
for the critical element is increased by a fixed amount and the procedure is repeated until
the maximum load is reached. In the current context, the first step can be again efficiently
treated by the FETI-based approach outlined in Section 2.5.
Table 3.1. Material data of composite system.
Matrix
Youngs modulus E 1 GPa
Poissons ratio 0.4
Fiber
Youngs modulus E 150 GPa
Poissons ratio 0.3
Interface
Effective strength
c
0.02 GPa
Maximum opening
c
0.1 m (0.2 m)
Mode mixity parameter 1
Initial damage
in
10
-6
The resulting homogenized stress-strain curves appear in Figure 3.3. For the incremental
minimization, the time interval was discretized into 100 identical time steps, while the
increment of damage 0.05 = was used for the SLA method. Both methods show the same
trend in the overall response, in particular the transition from the strain-hardening response to
an almost brittle failure for the interface with a smaller ductility. Moreover, both approaches
predict almost identical residual stiffnesses of the unit cell at the end of loading procedure. In
terms of computational time, the incremental minimization algorithm is considerably more
efficient then SLA, which requires about an order of magnitude higher number of FETI-based
solution of the linear problem with imperfect interfaces to capture the incremental damage
evolution at the weakest spots.
120 GRUBER, ZEMAN: A Variational Approach to Homogenization of Composites with Debonding Interfaces

Fig. 3.3. Macroscopic stress paths; the wiggly curves correspond to results of SLA analysis.
4 CONCLUSIONS
In the present contribution, one of the possible ways to the numerical modeling of an
imperfect fiber/matrix interface was introduced. This proposed model combines
homogenization approach, the FETI method and incremental energy minimization
philosophy. The presented results of a pilot study verify the results with an independent
linearization procedure and confirm the efficiency and robustness of the resulting algorithm.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Financial support of this work provided by projects GAR 106/08/1379 and
GAR 201/10/0357 is gratefully acknowledged.
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