UCLA

Statistics has a wide application in science and engineering fields. This research work is aim to study the progressive fiber breaking evolution in the longitudinally reinforced composites from a statistical perspective. First of all, the fiber breaking evolution in a single fiber composite is studied. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness-of-fit test is performed on the experimental data to characterize the damage pattern of the fiber in a single fiber composite. The results indicate that the fragmentation evolution of single fiber composites follows the Weibull statistic. Further investigation is focused on the damage initiation sequence in the multi-fiber composites. Four stochastic competing mechanisms are proposed to address the local load redistribution from the broken fibers to the intact fibers. These mechanisms are based on the dominating weakness selection, random walk selection, the self-avoiding walk (SAW) select and the all surrounding neighborhood fiber selection. Finally, the evolutionary fiber breaking process in the multi-fiber composites is demonstrated by using the Weibull statistic to govern the fiber breakings in the longitudinal direction, and the competing models to describe the sequence of damage initiation.