Evaluation of damage-based material models for carbon fiber-reinforced polymer composite laminate under mixed-mode bending

Abstract

Composite structures present high strength, low weight and design flexibility in terms of fiber orientation and number of plies and used vastly in advanced and modern applications. Among them, carbon fiber-reinforced polymer composites (CFRP) are used widely in aeronautic and automotive industries in which components are subjected to different loading types and this will necessity of investigation on fracture analysis using damage mechanics concepts. The reliability of structures made of composites, depends on continual process of damage initiation and propagation. In the current research, a specific CFRP composite is being tested and finite element simulated under monotonic loading which creates Mode I, Mode II and Mixed Mode (I&II) of fracture. The specimen is designed and fabricated by Institute of Automotive and Transport Engineering (ISAT) and the damage development can be tracked easily on the localized interface. The Double Cantilever Beam (DCB), End Notched Flexure (ENF) and Mixed Mode Flexure (MMF) experiments and FE simulation have been used simultaneously to investigate the damage under Mode I, Mode II and Mixed Mode (I &II) of fracture loading condition. Although, Damage model used is cohesive zone model (CZM) which is developed and validated before. Results showed that the CZM-based FE model is correlated well with experimental results and based on the experimental-computational approach, CZM parameters can be obtained and damage model will be characterized so that finite element method can be validated and stress and deformation analyses using FE results are feasible.