DUGi

A quick procedure to predict free-edge delamination in thin-ply laminates under tension

http://dugi.udg.edu/item/http:@@@@hdl.handle.net@@10256@@12125

Delaminations at the free-edges of a laminated composite under tension can be triggered by transverse cracks or by high interlaminar stresses. The capability for predicting these phenomena when the ply thickness is reduced (thin-ply laminates) is particularly challenging because damage mechanisms are delayed or even suppressed. In this work, an existing energy-based failure criterion and a simplified finite element model with cohesive elements are combined to develop a computationally inexpensive predictive tool. Its comparison with experimental data demonstrates that this approach captures the trends of the critical strain for delamination with respect to ply thickness and ply location and the quantitative agreement with the predictions is satisfactory

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish government through the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under the contracts DPI2012-34465 and MAT2012-37552-C03-03, which is partially funded by the FEDER funds of the EC. The first author acknowledges the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya with the pre-doctoral grant FI-DGR (2014FI B1 00123). The company CHOMARAT (Ardèche, France) is acknowledged for providing the NCF material and Aldila (Poway, California, USA) for the epoxy system pre-preg. The company AIRBUS partially funded this work through the 2genCOMP project

Elsevier