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Z-pinning was originally designed to improve the delamination toughness and the impact resistance of composite laminates. However, there is extensive experimental evidence that this improvement is accompanied by a reduction of the in-plane properties. The main mechanisms responsible for this deterioration are the local change in fiber content, fiber distortion, and the inclusion of resin-rich regions near the Z-pin. The shape of these geometrical features strongly depends on the laminate stacking sequence and on pin parameters such as pin diameter, pin content, and initial pin inclination angle. Their shape complexity challenges analytical modelling approaches which are currently used to generate RVE geometries for simulations.

A computational approach is presented to generate such geometrical models. Resin-rich regions are modelled by initially straight discretized lines which are gradually shaped by a …