Deep Learning-based Mechanical Characterization of Synthetically Generated Plant Fibers under Transverse Compression

Plant fibers are increasingly used as sustainable reinforcements in composites, but the intrinsic variability of their microstructure causes substantial scatter in transverse mechanical behavior, complicating composite design. Characterizing this behavior relies on finite element (FE) simulations requiring several minutes of high-performance computing per fiber, making high-throughput characterization across realistic fiber populations impractical. In this study, we propose a deep learning framework replacing this FE bottleneck with a fast pipeline. It includes two coupled recursive U-Nets predicting the step-by-step evolution of fiber deformation and internal stress fields under transverse compression, followed by a regression CNN estimating the transverse Young's modulus from the final stress field. Unlike prior approaches predicting stress fields for fixed configurations or idealized geometries, our framework recursively resolves the full temporal stress evolution for synthetic fibers derived from real hemp cross-sections, with or without a lumen. Trained on 1,000 synthetic fiber geometries with FE ground truth, it reproduces the stress field sequence with a Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM) of 0.9574 ± 0.0074 and a Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 0.0345 ± 0.0079. It estimates transverse Young's modulus with an R2 of 0.938 ± 0.024, a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 24.31 ± 1.23 MPa, and a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 5.25 ± 0.91%. Inference requires under one second per fiber versus five minutes per FE simulation, drastically reducing computational cost. This offers a fast, reliable tool for mechanical characterization of synthetic plant fibers, with promising applications in designing natural fiber-reinforced composites.