• Corn, S.
• Testoni, G.
• Ienny, P.
• Léger, Romain

Abstract

Predicting the in-service durability of a structure is a challenge for engineers, especially when water or moisture are involved. Therefore, a model-based approach which allows assessing the effect of this media on the material's behaviour is proposed in this study. Its first step consists in simulating the water diffusion in the material as a function of temperature and stress state. For composite materials, this simulation is complicated by the heterogeneous nature of the material and by its multiscale organization. The purpose of this research is to develop a water diffusion numerical model that accounts for the actual microstructure of a biocomposite. The material under study is a unidirectionally flax reinforced polyester composite dedicated to ship structures. Two observation scales are considered: the yarn scale composed of bulk matrix, single fibres and bundles, and the composite scale with bulk matrix and yarns. A so-called 'direct' model where geometry replicates accurately an example of a real microstructure was compared to a 'parametric' model which is built up from several key parameters assesed from a microscopic analysis of this composite. First results show that the parametric model leads to a reliable prediction of the water diffusion at the studied scales.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• microstructure
• simulation
• composite
• durability