Heterogeneous solid element for multiscale modeling of aperiodic composite structures

Heterogeneous Solid Element (HSE) is developed based on Mechanics of Structure Genome (MSG) to model a heterogeneous body as an equivalent solid element by an effective element stiffness matrix. HSE modeling includes homogenization, macroscopic global analysis, and dehomogenization to recover local strain/stress fields. HSE avoids the local periodicity assumption for traditional multiscale modeling techniques for composite structures which compute effective material properties instead. Abaqus composite solid element and MSG-based traditional multiscale modeling are used to validate the accuracy of HSE. All example results show that HSE is more accurate in predicting global structural behavior and local strains/stresses. HSE provides a novel concept for multiscale modeling by homogenizing heterogeneous microstructures into equivalent solid elements rather than material points.