TY - JOUR AB - Aligned hybrid-fibre discontinuous composites offer the ability to tailor their mechanical response through careful microstructural design. However, with tailorability comes microstructural complexity, which in turn leads to many sources of variability and defects. A virtual testing framework was further extended to investigate the influence of variability and defects on the mechanical performance of various aligned discontinuous composite material systems. This approach identified the most critical sources of variability as (i) fibre strength, (ii) the distance between fibre ends, or (iii) the level of fibre-type intermingling, depending on the material system. Fibre vacancy defects were shown to have the most significant influence on the strength and ductility of aligned discontinuous composites, although this sensitivity can be reduced through hybridisation of the fibre types. AU - Finley,J AU - Henry,J AU - Shaffer,M AU - Pimenta,S DO - 10.1177/0021998319862855 EP - 589 PY - 2020/// SN - 0021-9983 SP - 565 TI - The influence of variability and defects on the mechanical performance of tailorable composites T2 - Journal of Composite Materials UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021998319862855 UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/71537 VL - 54 ER -