Delamitation characteristics of Glare laminates containing Doubler and Splice features under high cycle fatigue loading
Ahmad Al-Azzawi  1, 2@  , Luiz Kawashita  3@  , Carol Featherston  1@  
1 : Cardiff School of Engineering  (Cardiff University)
The Parade, Cardiff, CF24 3AA -  United Kingdom
2 : College of Engineering  (University of Babylon)
Babylon -  Iraq
3 : Advanced Composites Centre for Innovation and Science  (University of Bristol)
Bristol, BS8 1TR, UK -  United Kingdom

A modified cohesive zone model (CZM) was developed to simulate damage initiation and evolution in Glare™ Fibre-Metal Laminate (FML) specimens containing both splice and doubler features under high-cycle fatigue loading. The proposed model computes the cohesive stiffness degradation under mixed-mode loading based on user-defined crack growth rate data. The model was implemented as a VUMAT subroutine for the FEA software Abaqus/Explicit. The numerical results were validated using experimental data obtained for a number of Glare 4B specimens containing splice and doubler features. Experimental fatigue tests were monitored using digital image correlation (DIC) to provide full-field displacement and strain data and Acoustic Emission (AE) monitoring to detect damage initiation and propagation. It is shown that the fatigue model is in good agreement with experiments in terms of the number of cycles to failure as well as the damage mechanisms observed in FMLs in presence of such internal features.

 


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