Print Email Facebook Twitter A 3D separable cohesive element for modelling the coupled failure in laminated composite materials Title A 3D separable cohesive element for modelling the coupled failure in laminated composite materials Author Lu, X. (National University of Singapore) Chen, B. Y. (TU Delft Aerospace Structures & Computational Mechanics) Tan, V. B.C. (National University of Singapore) Tay, T. E. (National University of Singapore) Date 2020 Abstract The interaction between matrix cracks and interface delamination is a major failure mechanism in composite laminates and has been a subject of active research in recent years. Although coupled failure behaviour of composite laminates between matrix cracks and delamination has been observed in experiments, accurate modelling of this phenomenon for application in composite structures remains challenging. In this work, a three-dimensional separable cohesive element (SCE) is proposed to enable the modelling of interaction between matrix cracking and interfacial delamination in laminated fibre-reinforced composite materials. It is demonstrated that traditional cohesive elements are incapable of modelling the coupled failure mechanisms accurately if partitioning is not allowed. The SCE may be partitioned according to the configuration and geometry of matrix cracks in adjacent plies, thus maintaining appropriate connection between plies. Physically, the original interface is split and new interfaces are formed to bond the homologous cracked solids during fracturing process. The stress concentration induced by matrix cracks and the load transfer from cracked solid elements to interface cohesive element are effectively modelled. The proposed SCE is applied to model progressive failure in composite laminates and the results are found to agree with experiments. Subject Computational modellingFloating node methodFractureLaminates To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4a3b0b42-27c5-4348-b711-033a7e052b0a Publisher Applied Mechanics Laboratory ISBN 9781510896932 Source ECCM 2018 - 18th European Conference on Composite Materials Event ECCM18: 18th European Conference on Composite Materials, 2018-06-24 → 2018-06-28, Athens, Greece Series ECCM 2018 - 18th European Conference on Composite Materials Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type conference paper Rights © 2020 X. Lu, B. Y. Chen, V. B.C. Tan, T. E. Tay Files PDF 8ec1f8a78c6349929360077ba ... f0f437.pdf 789.92 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:4a3b0b42-27c5-4348-b711-033a7e052b0a/datastream/OBJ/view