Corrugation Reinforced Composites: A Method for Filling Holes in Material‐Property Space

Material‐property space is filled with holes representing desirable combinations of properties, such as high strength and high necking strain. One way to fill those holes is to use architectured materials. In this work, Finite Element Modeling (FEM) simulations are performed to evaluate composites with a corrugated reinforcement architecture across a range of volume fractions and corrugation heights for a model copper‐steel system. The corrugated reinforcement geometry shows large improvements in necking strain, which increases with corrugation height, without sacrificing strength, and fills a desirable region in material‐property space. Additionally, it is found that the necking strain of a matrix material can be increased by adding a less ductile reinforcing material provided it has a highly corrugated geometry. The improvement in necking strain seen in these composites is attributed to a boost in work hardening that results from an evolving reinforcement alignment as the corrugation unbends.