Mode III interlaminar fracture and damage characterization in woven fabric-reinforced glass/epoxy composite laminates

Abstract

The increasing use of composite materials in industry leads to the need for a detailed investigation on fiber-reinforced composite joints. In the present study, fracture behavior of woven fabric-reinforced glass/epoxy composite laminates under mode III crack growth was experimentally investigated and numerically modeled. Two methods were used for the calculation of the strain energy release rate: the experimental compliance calibration method and the virtual crack closure technique. To achieve this aim, edge crack torsion was used to evaluate fracture toughness in mode III loading (out of plane-shear) at different crack lengths. Load–displacement and associated energy release rates were obtained for various cases of interest. To calculate fracture toughness JIII, two criteria were considered in load–displacement curve which included non-linearity and maximum points; it was observed that JIII increased with the increase of crack length. Based on the finite element analysis, the recommended crack length range was given in order to design a configuration which would give 97% mode III contribution to the total energy release rate. Both the experimental compliance method and the virtual crack closure technique proved applicable for the interpretation of the fracture mechanics data of woven glass/epoxy laminates in mode III.

Cohesive zone modelling of Mode III delamination using the edge crack torsion test

“…This was because the initial linear elastic region of the traction-separation response was relatively small compared to the damage propagation region. Hence, the value of 410 6 MPa/mm was a good choice because it could be easily estimated using Equation (5). This was also in the similar range of the values generally used by researchers [22,29,30,35].…”

“…The recent testing methods on mode III delamination include the modified split cantilever beam (MSCB) [2,3], modified edge crack torsion (MECT) (which is still commonly known as edge crack torsion (ECT)) [4,5], six ECT (6ECT) [6], modified shear torsion bending (MSTB) [7], which was initially designed for mixed-mode I+II+III delamination [8], split-shear torsion (SST) [9] and newly designed torsional tests [10]. Among the above mentioned tests, the edge crack torsion test is currently under evaluation by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) to be standardised [11].…”

“…The VCCT has been commonly employed by various researchers to simulate the mode III delamination of carbon/epoxy [6,[14][15][16] and glass/epoxy [3,5,[17][18][19][20] composite laminates. Nevertheless, in recent years, the CZM has gained its popularity in simulating the delamination behaviour of laminated composites.…”

The use of ECT and 6PBP tests to evaluate fracture behavior of adhesively bonded steel/epoxy joints under Mode-III and Mixed Mode III/II

“…Also, because of brittle fracture behavior of adhesive joint in this study, the maximum point was proposed as critical load at failure (initial crack propagation) [33]. The average values of critical loads were extracted (as shown in Table 2) based on peak load criteria.…”

Antiplane–inplane shear mode delamination between two second-order shear deformable composite plates

“…[14,15]) and changes the dynamic properties significantly, and therefore has a major influence on the lifetime of the structure. The delamination behavior of composite materials is characterized by different specimens for mode-I [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], mode-II [24][25][26], mixed-mode I/II [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37], mode-III [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48], mixed-mode I/III [49] mixed-mode II/III [42,[50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59] and mixed-mode I/II/III [60][61]…”