Delaminations at the free edge of a composite laminate

✍ Scribed by Guru Swamy Amrutharaj; Khin Yong Lam; Brian Cotterell

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 849 KB
• Volume: 27
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1359-8368
• DOI: 10.1016/1359-8368(96)00015-7

✦ Synopsis

The concept of a fracture process zone where damage takes place is used to analyse the delaminations at the free edges of angle ply laminates under uniaxial tension. The use of a fracture process zone removes the singularity in the interlaminar stresses and enables the initiation and growth of delaminations to be modelled for a perfect laminate without any assumed prior defects. Two different models for the stressdisplacement relationship in the fracture process zone are examined: a constant stress up to critical displacement and a linear relationship. Finite element analysis shows that there is little difference in the predictions obtained from the two models. An approximate analysis is presented for the constant stress stress displacement model which is shown to agree with a finite element solution and experimental data. Hence it is argued that the approximate method using a constant stress model for the fracture process zone is sufficient for accurate prediction of delaminations.