The wind turbine and helicopter rotor blades when exposed to dust borne environment are subjected to leading edge erosion because of the impact of dust particles. These blades are manufactured from fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites and therefore, it is important to predict the erosion rate of FRP composites. In this paper, the main aim is to accurately predict the erosion rate of uni-directional FRP composites using machine-learning algorithms like Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB). The model uses input parameters like erodent impact angle, velocity of erodent particle, fiber orientation and, fiber volume fraction as the input and erosion rate as the output variable. The total dataset considered for training and testing the model is obtained from two parts. The first part of the dataset is obtained from literature and the other part is collected from performing in house experiments on uni-directional glass fiber reinforced polymer composites. The crater profiles of the tested specimens are characterized using 3d Alicona imaging microscopy. The machine-learning models considered in this study provide accurate results on the dataset. However, the XGB method is faster and accurate than the ANN model in the case of dataset not used for training. The feature importance from the XGB model suggests that impact particle velocity, impact angle and fiber orientation are the most important input features. The model predictions by taking into account the three input features provide accurate results without affecting the accuracy of the model.
A multiscale model is developed to understand the material removal process in a unidirectional carbon fibre epoxy composite impacted by a single-erodent particle. The embedded cell approach is used to model the carbon fibre and epoxy at a microscale. The micromodel is embedded centrally in the macroscale lamina of the composite plate. The carbon fibre is considered to be elastic with orthotropic strain limits as the failure criteria. The epoxy matrix is modelled as an elastic--plastic material with multilinear isotropic hardening. The maximum equivalent plastic strain limit is used as the matrix material failure limit. Using this embedded micromechanics model, the role of matrix and the fibre in developing the composite material erosion behaviour has been clearly elucidated. The results from the simulation indicate the change in the matrix erosion behaviour as a function of the fibre volume fraction. For the current thermoset matrix, material erosion response changes from brittle behaviour to ductile behaviour with an increase in fibre volume fraction. The current study has been able to highlight the individual role of matrix and the fibre in developing the semi-ductile erosion response peculiar to a fibre-reinforced composite material.
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