Analysis of stiffness loss in cross-ply composite laminates

Abstract The behaviour of laminated composite plates beyond first-ply failure has been the subject of much research work. It is well known that generally, the load-bearing capability of laminated composite plates can remain significant despite the presence of some damage in the plies. Traditionally, the ply-discount method has been used among analysts and designers, although the approach is generally regarded as too conservative. It is therefore desirable to develop models for the prediction of the mechanical properties of damaged composite laminates at various applied loads, and to be able to correlate the changes in properties with the amount of damage and cracking within each constituent ply. Generally, if the models are to be useful as predictive tools, they must be capable of not only sufficiently describing the damage state but also the nature of the damage evolution with loading. This ‘evolution law’ is often obtained through fracture analysis, although it should be noted that the diffused nature of cracks and the multiplicity of failure modes in composites in general greatly complicates the analysis. The problem of transverse matrix cracking in cross-ply laminates under uniaxial tension is considerably simpler because it is essentially dominated by mode I fracture. Thus it is necessarily the first step for any model aiming to predict stiffness losses in composite laminates. In this paper, a constitutive model of the damage state for composite laminates, first proposed by Allen et al. , is used with a damage evolution criterion based on strain energy to predict the stiffness loss due to matrix cracking in cross-ply laminated composite plates. Although the constitutive model does not require the determination of many constants, the state of damage is described by a vector of internal state variables (ISV), which contains information on the crack geometry and fracture modes. A series of parametric finite element analyses was performed to determine the effects of relative ply thicknesses, crack density and crack opening profile on the vector of ISVs. A computer algorithm was written for the analysis of cross-ply laminates based on the damage evolution criterion proposed in this work. The results of the analysis compare favourably with experimental measurements of progressive stiffness loss in damaged cross-ply graphite-epoxy laminates obtained from other researchers.