ABSTRACT
In the last years, some microscopic composite models were proposed with a different level of detail. A common approach is to assume a cylindrical cord shape (Polley 1999, Pham et al. 2009). To meet the anisotropic cord properties, Polley 1999 used a transversely-isotropic material model. In this model, the orientation of the preferred direction is distributed homogeneously over the cord and coaxially with the cord axis. So all anisotropic effects have to emerge from the material model instead of thegeometry model. An advantage of this approach is the simple discretisation of the composite with finite elements.
