Senthil Vel: Composites Toolbox

Microstructural Analysis Toolbox for Unidirectional Composites

The Microstructural Analysis Toolbox is a Matlab graphical user interface (GUI) program that allows the user to find the effective engineering properties of hexagonally-packed two-phase unidirectional fiber-reinforced composite materials using the asymptotic expansion homogenization (AEH). The program also has the ability to perform stress analyses on a representative material element (RME) at the microstructural level. The user need only provide the engineering properties for the two individual phases (fiber and matrix), define a desired volume fraction percentage for the fiber, and specify the accuracy of the finite element mesh to be used in the analysis.  If a subsequent microscale stress analysis is desired, the user must provide, in addition to the input stated above, the average macroscopic stresses and temperature change.  The embedded plot enables the user to view images of the RME and mesh before and after performing AEH, as well as filled contour plots of the six microscale stress components subsequent to a stress analysis.

The GUI package was developed by Alden Cook and Senthil Vel in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Maine. The coding was done in Matlab and C by Alden Cook.

Please email questions or comments to senthil.vel@maine.edu.

Screenshot:

The toolbox will run only on MS Windows operating systems. It is not compatible with Mac OS, Linux or OS X.

Download standalone version of toolbox (does not require Matlab):

Standalone version (390 MB zip file)

Installation Instructions (pdf)

User manual: 

Basic Users Manual (pdf)