A generalized plane strain micromechanical model is developed to predict the
behavior of a unidirectional fiber-reinforced composite subjected to combined thermal
and mechanical loads. An appropriate meshless local Petrov–Galerkin formulation is
presented for the solution of the governing partial differential equations of the
problem. To reduce computation time, a unit step function is employed as test
function. A direct method is presented for enforcement of the continuity of
displacement and traction at the fiber-matrix interface to model the fully bonded
interface. Results of this study revealed that the model provides highly accurate
predictions with relatively small number of nodes. Numerical results for
glass/epoxy and SiC/Ti composites subjected to thermomechanical loading show
that predictions for both local and global responses of the composites are in
good agreement with results of theoretical, experimental and finite element
methods.
