Electrical conductivity tensor modelling of stratified woven-fabric carbon fiber reinforced polymer composite materials

In this paper, a new multi-scale approach to predict the effective electrical conductivity tensor of a woven-fabric composite layer is presented. The result is then used to model the behaviour of a stratified composite material composed by a pileup of woven-fabric layers with different relative orientations. To take into account the orientation and the anisotropy of the material a 3D multilayer hexahedral degenerated elements method is used to model the anisotropic plate. This approach enables to take account random distribution of carbon fibers in the yarns, 3D effects and electric percolation threshold with an acceptable numerical cost. The developed model is then validated by experimental results.