A two-scale numerical analysis of intra-yarn hybridnatural/synthetic woven composites

This paper investigates how combining natural and synthetic fibers withinyarns, altering the degree of hybridisation, and varying weave architecturesaffect the homogenized elastic properties and stress distributions in 2D wovencomposite laminae using a two-scale homogenization scheme. The novelty liesin integrating a micro-scalerepresentative volume elementmodel with a meso-scalerepeating unit cellmodel to capture intra-yarn natural/synthetic fiberhybridisation. The study focuses on 2/2 twill and 5-harness satin woven lami-nae with flax/E-glass, hemp/E-glass and basalt/E-glass hybrid yarns, all with atotal fiber volume fraction of 0.6. Fiber distributions are created through a ran-dom sequential expansion algorithm for hybrid RVEs, while periodic meso-structures are used to define weave architectures for RUCs. Results show thatyarn-level fiber hybridisation significantly influences matrix stress distribu-tions, with variations of up to 22%. In contrast, weave architecture has a mini-mal effect, with variations in homogenized properties below 2%. Varying fibertypes, degrees of hybridisation and weave architectures allow for the tailoringof yarn and lamina properties and altering the stress distributions at micro-and meso-scales and potentially influencing damage mechanisms. The model-ing approach for analyzing the mechanical behavior of intra-yarn hybrid natu-ral/synthetic woven laminae could potentially be used to tailor their toleranceto damage.