Progressive damage analyses of angle-ply laminates exhibiting free edge effects using continuum damage mechanics with layer-wise finite element method

摘要

Capability of continuum damage mechanics (CDM) to predict the damage mechanism evolution of composite laminates has rarely been carried out, and most of the previous CDM works mainly focused on the overall response of the laminates. In this paper, progressive damage and overall response of the composite laminates under quasi-static, monotonic increasing loading are investigated using three-dimensional (3D) CDM implementation in a finite element method that is based on the layer-wise laminate plate theory. In the damage formulation, each composite ply is treated as a homogeneous or-thotropic material exhibiting orthotropic damage in the form of distributed microscopic cracks that are normal to the three principal material directions. The progressive damage of different angle-ply composite laminates under quasi-static loading that exhibit free edge effects is investigated. It is shown that using CDM global behaviour and various damage mechanisms affected by the complex nature of free edges can be qualitatively well predicted.