This manuscript presents an extended finite element method (XFEM) approach to capture the interactions between fibers in short fiber reinforced composites. Short fiber inclusions are incorporated into the XFEM framework as deformable elastic zero measure objects. Two separate enrichment functions are employed to account for both the presence of fibers within the composite domain and to idealize the progressive debonding along fiber matrix interfaces. This study investigates the accuracy characteristics of the formulation when multiple fiber enrichments and interface debonding enrichments lie within a single element. Accurately capturing multiple enrichments in a single element is particularly important for modeling the failure process of fiber reinforced composites with a significant amount of discontinuous fibers with high aspect ratios. The performance of the proposed XFEM model is assessed by comparing model predictions to the direct finite element method for various interacting fiber configurations. The numerical verification studies indicated that the proposed model displays high accuracy and captures the debonding interactions at fiber-matrix interfaces.
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