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In fabricating complicated laminated composite structures by using prepregs, various kinds of fiber discontinuities such as ply drop-off and seams can be formed. Special care must be taken for the fiber discontinuity since they can induce stress concentration, and damage onset and growth originated from them may lead to catastrophic failure of the structure. The present study evaluates mechanical behaviour in unidirectional CFRP laminates that contain centered or dispersed fiber discontinuities fabricated by using interlaminar-toughened CFRP prepregs. Tensile testing has shown that higher onset stress of the interlaminar delamination between continuous and discontinuous plies can be achieved by interlaminar-toughened CFRP with centered fiber discontinuity compared to that for conventional CFRP prepregs. As for the specimen with dispersed fiber discontinuities, fracture stress keeps almost constant with more than 20 mm of interval of the dispersed fiber discontinuities. By applying the onset stress of the delamination that is experimentally obtained using centered discontinuity to an analytical model, critical energy release rate by the delamination onset is calculated. Then it is indicated that one can predict the fracture stress of the specimen with the dispersed fiber discontinuities with more than 20 mm interval of the discontinuities by using the critical energy release rate. This indicates that fracture of the laminate is dominated by the interlaminar delamination between discontinuous plies with more than 20 mm of interval.

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