Direct Comparison of the Fibre Break Development in Unidirectional Carbon Fibre Composites under Tension Predicted by Statistical Models and Measured Using 4D In-situ SRCT

In this work longitudinal tensile tests combined with in-situ Synchrotron Radiation Computed Tomography (SRCT) are analysed to capture the accumulation fibre breaks in unidirectional composites bundles of several thousand carbon fibres. A virtual representation of the same microstructure has been simulated using a statistical strength model. The numerical model has shown to capture trends in the fibre break development for a chosen material system. The predicted strength values are validated against macroscopically measured strength for standardised coupons using continuous end tabs. Model inaccuracies observed in regards to the predicted developments of clustered fibre breaks are analysed and an outlook on the further improvement of the strength model is given.