Fracture criteria for orthogonally reinforced composites

✍ Scribed by A. Kreis; H. Kolsky; A.C. Pipkin

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 620 KB
• Volume: 25
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0013-7944
• DOI: 10.1016/0013-7944(86)90202-x

✦ Synopsis

Ahstrati-Cracks

in cross-ply fiber-reinforced specimens generally run parallel to one family of fibers or the other, but the direction of the crack can change abruptly. This qualitative behavior is predicted by the so-called critical force fracture criterion. However, the critical force criterion implies that no crack can run straight across a sufficiently narrow specimen without turning, and we find experimentally that this is not true. Consequently, we propose a new fracture criterion based on critical values of what we call tensile stress intensity factors. The new criterion predicts crack trajectories that agree with experimentally observed trajectories much better than those predicted by using the critical force criterion.