The present study has focused on achieving a micromechanical understanding of the microbond test, which involves pulling a fiber out of a bead of matrix (i.e. droplet) through a knife-edge, in order to quantify the interfacial fracture properties of fiber-reinforced composites. According to the microbond test results for carbon-fiber and epoxy-resin system, matrix cracking occurred during the fiber pullout, in addition to the debonding at the fiber-matrix interface. Therefore, in evaluating the fracture properties of the fiber-matrix interface, we should pay attention to the coupling effects of matrix failure and interfacial debonding on the test results. Then, we discuss how to best extract the interfacial properties while excluding the influence of matrix plasticity and cracking, using numerical simulations. The key mechanism demonstrated here is that the pullout force, in the cases where the influence of matrix cracking is negligible, appears as the upper limit among the experimental data of the pullout force for a constant initial embedded length of the fiber in the matrix. For this reason, the upper-limit data all over the range of embedded fiber length in experiments can be reasonably evaluated by the simulation focusing on the debonding process with matrix plasticity. This evaluation technique is effective as a way of extracting interfacial properties appropriately from microbond test results.

No abstract

Carbon fiber-reinforced composites have been recently applied for engine fan blades because of their high specific strength. In the design of the fan blade, bird-strike impact is one of the greatest concerns, since impact-induced damage can lead to the engine stalling. This study presents a numerical method to analyze bird-strike impact as a soft-body impact on a cantilevered composite panel. Especially, we coupled a stabilized dynamic contact analysis, which enables appropriate prediction of impact force on the panel, with laminate damage analysis to predict the impact-induced progressive damage in the composite. This method is verified through a comparison with experimental results. With the numerical method, we investigate the effect of impact condition, blade thickness and shape on the impact-induced damage in a composite fan blade subjected to a bird strike. An intermediate blade thickness and a large blade curvature help to improve the bird-striking impact resistance of the composite.

Carbon fiber-reinforced composites have been recently applied for engine fan blades, because of their high specific strength. In the design of the fan blade, the bird-strike impact is one of the greatest concerns, since impactinduced damage can lead to the engine stall. This study presented a numerical method to analyze the bird-strike impact as a soft-body impact on cantilevered composite panel. Especially, we coupled a stabilized dynamic contact analysis, which enables predicting impact force on the panel appropriately, with laminate damage analysis to predict the impactinduced progressive damage in the composite. This method was verified through the comparison with the experimental results. With the numerical method, we investigated the effect of impact condition, blade thickness and shape on the impact-induced damage in composite fan blade subjected to a bird strike. An intermediate blade thickness and a large blade curvature help improving the bird-striking impact resistance of the composite.