An enriched model of fiber-reinforced thin flexible structures with inplane buckling capabilities

Fiber-reinforced layers are very popular in industry but are prone to structural instabilities observed in various experimental and technological environments. Such situations combine global inplane buckling of the reinforcing fibers and local shearing or compression of the filling material. The purpose of the work is to develop an enriched macroscopic model able to treat both aspects through an adequate kinematic and energetic description of the different components and their coupling. It introduces, in addition to the filling material, a surface density of rods able to resist against inplane and outplane bending. A new finite element model is then developed at macroscopic level and validated in different asymptotic or postbuckling regimes. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.