Effect of Fiber Waviness on the Elastic Properties of Pultruded Glass Fiber Reinforced Composites

Pultruded glass fiber reinforced composites are widely used in high-voltage transmission engineering due to their excellent electrical and mechanical properties. However, the formation process of glass fiber reinforced composites inevitably results in fiber waviness, leading to fluctuations in macroscopic properties. In this study, we investigate the effect of fiber waviness on the tensile modulus of the composite material. Using XCT scanning technology, we obtain the geometric properties of the fibers, and we establish a voxel mesh based representative volume element model to compare the results of the finite element model with the analytical calculation of the elastic modulus. The results show that the fiber waviness caused by the pultrusion process has a significant effect on the fiber direction modulus, causing fluctuations of approximately 6 GPa in modulus at similar fiber volume fractions. In contrast, analytical calculations can only reflect the effect of fiber content. For transverse tensile modulus, there is a large discrepancy between simulation results and analytical calculations, and the adoption of voxel mesh fiber elements is the reason for the higher simulation results.