Unidirectional carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) laminates are widely employed in different fields due to their low density combined with high stiffness and strength. However, unlike usual materials, composite laminates may present many different failure mechanisms. Additionally, the stress distribution depends on the material properties due to its anisotropy, making the composite design a hard task. This study deals with a large plate made of CFRP with a central crack subject to uniaxial loading. The main goal of this investigation is to carry out an analysis of the stress distribution and the damaged area around a crack tip. The damaged area, or processed zone, is an important way to evaluate the applicability and limitations of linear elastic fracture mechanics. An analytical closed-form equation is derived using Tsai’s modulus combined with Tsai–Wu failure criterion and compared with finite element simulations. The results show the accuracy of the proposed equation and the influence of the fibers’ orientation on the processed zone shape. Due to Tsai’s modulus application, the stress distribution can be obtained for any single-layered CFRP.
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