Energy and Strength-Based Criteria for Intralaminar Crack Growth in Regions with High Stress Gradients

Composites Meet Sustainability: Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Composite Materials (ECCM20). Vol.4: Modeling and Prediction 2022
Anish Niranjan Kulkarni, Andrejs Pupurs, Patrik Fernberg

Composite laminates can develop high density of intralaminar cracks upon severe mechanical or thermal loading. When the distance between two adjacent intralaminar cracks reduces to a very small value normalized with respect to the ply thickness, local stress perturbations caused by these cracks start to interact resulting in the formation of regions with high stress gradients in 90-layer. In the present study, stress state in such regions is analyzed for glass-fiber and carbon-fiber epoxy cross-ply laminates using finite element modeling. The high stress gradients are seen to influence growth characteristics of new intralaminar cracks. The growth characteristics are studied using FEM models and fracture mechanics, with the available energy release rate calculated by virtual crack closure technique and J-Integral method.

Keywords
Intralaminar cracking; finite element modeling; energy release rate; virtual crack closure technique; J-Integral
DOI
10.5075/epfl-298799_978-2-9701614-0-0
Hyperlink
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/298799?ln=en

Kulkarni, A., Pupurs, A., Fernberg, P. Energy and Strength-Based Criteria for Intralaminar Crack Growth in Regions with High Stress Gradients. In: Composites Meet Sustainability: Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Composite Materials (ECCM20). Vol.4: Modeling and Prediction, Switzerland, Lausanne, 26-30 June, 2022. Lausanne: EPFL Lausanne, Composite Construction Laboratory, 2022, pp.199/1011-206/1011. ISBN 978-2-9701614-0-0. Available from: doi:10.5075/epfl-298799_978-2-9701614-0-0

Publication language
English (en)