Modern Short Fiber Reinforced Polymer (SFRP) components are produced using a variety of manufacturing processes that have a large impact on the final material properties. In order to be able to predict the final material properties via FFT-based computational homogenization techniques, a digital twin of the underlying microstructure of the components is required. Digital imaging techniques such as µ-CT are expensive and time consuming. Therefore, we develop numerical methods to generate realistic digital microstructures, based on the prescribed fiber volume fraction, fiber orientations, and fiber lengths. In this context, we have developed special techniques that are able to generate microstructures with an arbitrary prescribed fiber length distribution.

Numerically generated microstructure based on an experimentally determined fiber length distribution.