Cardiff University | Prifysgol Caerdydd ORCA
Online Research @ Cardiff 
WelshClear Cookie - decide language by browser settings

An experimental/numerical investigation into the main driving force for crack propagation in uni-directional fibre-reinforced composite laminae

Cahill, L. M. A., Natarajan, S., Bordas, Stephane Pierre Alain ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8634-7002, O'Higgins, R. M. and McCarthy, C. T. 2014. An experimental/numerical investigation into the main driving force for crack propagation in uni-directional fibre-reinforced composite laminae. Composite Structures 107 , pp. 119-130. 10.1016/j.compstruct.2013.05.039

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

This paper presents an enriched finite element method to simulate the growth of cracks in linear elastic, aerospace composite materials. The model and its discretisation are also validated through a complete experimental test series. Stress intensity factors are calculated by means of an interaction integral. To enable this, we propose application of (1) a modified approach to the standard interaction integral for heterogeneous orthotropic materials where material interfaces are present; (2) a modified maximum hoop stress criterion is proposed for obtaining the crack propagation direction at each step, and we show that the “standard” maximum hoop stress criterion which had been frequently used to date in literature, is unable to reproduce experimental results. The influence of crack description, material orientation along with the presence of holes and multi-material structures are investigated. It is found, for aerospace composite materials with View the MathML source ratios of approximately 10, that the material orientation is the driving factor in crack propagation. This is found even for specimens with a material orientation of 90°, which were previously found to cause difficulty in both damage mechanics and discrete crack models e.g. by the extended finite element method (XFEM). The results also show the crack will predominantly propagate along the fibre direction, regardless of the specimen geometry, loading conditions or presence of voids.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Engineering
Advanced Research Computing @ Cardiff (ARCCA)
Subjects: T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
Uncontrolled Keywords: Composites; Fracture mechanics; Crack growth; Extended finite element method; Material interfaces
Publisher: Elsevier
Last Modified: 01 Nov 2022 10:42
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/92603

Citation Data

Cited 51 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item Edit Item