  In the study presented in this paper, we analyzed the mechanical response of
a glass fiber plain weave/polymer composite at the fabric millimetric
mesoscale. The detail of the stress and strain fields in a fabric repeating
unit cell was numerically calculated using CraFT (Composite response and
Fourier Transforms), a code specifically conceived for simulating the
mechanical behaviour of materials with complex microstructure. The local strain
fields obtained by simulation were found to be in very good agreement with
measurements carried out using 3D Digital Image Correlation (3D DIC). From
numerical stress fields calculated with the CraFT solver, we also highlighted
the subregions inside the periodic mesostructure where there is maximum stress.
Furthermore, with X-ray tomography post mortem measurements, we were able to
confirm that certain damage modes were well initiated in these microstructure
subregions of stress concentration.
