A Python package for homogenization procedures in fiber reinforced polymers

The Python package HomoPy is a numerical software tool which provides computational methods in the field of continuum mechanics with a specific emphasize on fiber reinforced composites. Experimental research has shown that hybridization effects for multi-inclusion composites exist (Fu & Lauke, 1998a; Summerscales & Short, 1978; Swolfs et al., 2014), which raises the demand to have numerical methods at hand to predict the effective properties of such composites. With a multi-inclusion Mori-Tanaka approach and the laminate theory incorporating the shear-lag modified Halpin-Tsai approach, HomoPy provides a solution to this demand.The key element of HomoPy is the calculation and visualization of effective elastic stiffness properties of hybrid materials, i.e. multi-inclusion composites, using homogenization procedures. The current homogenization implementations are the conventional, three-dimensional Mori Tanak approach (cf. Mori & Tanaka (1973)) in the formulation of Benveniste (1987) with a possible orientation averaging scheme after Advani & Tucker (1987). A comprehensive study on the effects of the orientation averaging on homogenization procedures can be found in Bauer & Böhlke (2022). To circumvent effective stiffness tensors, which are not major symmetric and therefore violate thermodynamical principles, the algorithm in Jiménez Segura et al. (2023) was implemented and can be activated by a flag parameter to ensure symmetric stiffnesses. Alternatively, the shear-lag modified Halpin-Tsai approach (cf. Fu et al. (2019)) for purely planar information, for which the laminate theory is used to calculate effective stiffness properties, is available. The use field of these tools is academic research.