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In modern lightweight structures, the use of fasteners is preferred to other joining techniques. An approach to increase the bearing strength is the local metal hybridisation, where carbon fibre-reinforced plastics layers are substituted locally by metal foils of the same thickness. The local replacement leads to a transition zone between the hybrid region and the pure carbon fibre-reinforced plastics region. The present work deals with the investigation of different transition zone patterns of carbon fibre-reinforced plastics-steel hybrid specimens in combined tension–bending tests and accompanying non-linear static simulation. The simulation includes delamination and intralaminar damage with the use of a cohesive zone model and Cuntze’s failure mode concept. Furthermore, residual thermal stresses are considered. A satisfying agreement of test and simulation is achieved, which allows the identification of beneficial transition zone configurations and also validates the numerical model for further parametric studies.

Curved structures made of fibre-reinforced plastics tend to show an out-of-plane failure type, when loaded under bending. One method to determine the related tensile strength in thickness direction, is the standardised unfolding test related to ASTM D6415 with L-profile specimens. However, the standard shall be used for unidirectional materials only, which is not the case for multidirectional laminates. Therefore, this publication presents methods to determine the layer-wise stress and strain state as well as occurring failure types of multidirectional laminates. An extension of the Lekhnitski formulae is presented and its results are validated by comparison with high resolution strain measurements by Digital Image Correlation. Based on the analytical solution, a failure analysis using Cuntze’s Failure Mode Concept is conducted. It was revealed, that the failure load and position can be predicted accurately, if a failure type related strength –in-plane or out-of-plane failure– is used. In the presence of [Formula: see text]-layers higher deviations occur between test and prediction and therefore limits the validity of the presented analytical failure analysis.