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Translaminar Cracking Modeling in Woven-ply Thermoplastic Laminates in Tension and in Compression

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Abstract

A numerical model developed in FE code Abaqus/Explicit was used to simulate the translaminar fracture and the damage propagation resulting from fiber breakage in woven-ply thermoplastic laminates. Compact tension and compact compression tests were modeled, and the primary physical phenomena responsible for the dissipation of mechanical energy during translaminar fracture were considered: fiber failure, in-plane shear plasticity and crushing plasticity. The objective was twofold: to highlight the dependence of the translaminar fracture on the stacking sequence and to understand how the mechanical energy is dissipated. Ultimately, the proposed numerical model enables a better understanding of the translaminar fracture behavior in tension and particularly in compression, which is more difficult to analyze due to the combination of complex physical phenomena at the same time. The proposed model shows that the fracture energy is the main dissipative phenomenon in quasi-isotropic laminates, contrary to orthotropic ones, in which plasticity and crushing become predominant.

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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to duly thank CALMIP High Performance Computing platform (https://www.calmip.univ-toulouse.fr) for providing the computational means required to conduct the numerical simulations under the project reference p1026.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INSA Rouen Normandie, Groupe de Physique des Matériaux (UMR CNRS 6634), 76801, St Etienne du Rouvray, France

    Juan Daniel Pujols Gonzalez & Benoit Vieille

  2. Université de Toulouse, Institut Clément Ader (UMR CNRS 5312), ISAE-SUPAERO / INSA / IMT Mines Albi / UPS, 10 av. E. Belin, 31055, Toulouse Cedex 4, France

    Christophe Bouvet

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  1. Juan Daniel Pujols Gonzalez
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Gonzalez, J.D.P., Bouvet, C. & Vieille, B. Translaminar Cracking Modeling in Woven-ply Thermoplastic Laminates in Tension and in Compression. Appl Compos Mater 30, 913–935 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10443-023-10128-6

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