113 - DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTOMATED REMESHING SIMULATION FRAMEWORK FOR QUASI-STATIC DELAMINATION PROPAGATION USING THE VIRTUAL CRACK CLOSURE TECHNIQUE (CompTest 2025)
Delamination is a critical failure mechanism in composite laminates leading to stress redistribution, reducing stiffness and residual strength, and posing serious risks to the component’s structural integrity [1,2]. The ability to predict its propagation under both quasi-static and cyclic loading is essential to ensure the safety and reliability of these materials in safety critical applications. Numerical techniques like the Cohesive Zone Model (CZM) [3] and the Virtual Crack Closure Technique (VCCT) [4] are widely used for delamination modeling, but present significant limitations. Between the two, the CZM is more robust, but it requires difficult-to-obtain traction-separation laws as input and can become computationally expensive. The VCCT is based on Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics and the required input values can be obtained experimentally. This technique is highly sensitive to front-mesh alignment and prone to noise near discontinuities caused by non-conformal meshes. For large delaminations and curved fronts, often encountered in structural applications, this becomes a critical issue, leading to an over-estimation of propagation. This work introduces an automated numerical framework for quasi-static delamination propagation, addressing the limitations of the VCCT through an automated remeshing algorithm. The framework is implemented using Abaqus CAE and Python scripting. Multiple simulations are sequentially launched and their results automatically extracted by the code, building onto the work by Martulli and Bernasconi.
Date
21.05.2025.
Keywords
Delamination, Finite elements, VCCT, Remeshing
