PROBABILITY-BASED ANALYSIS FOR MODELING FAILURE MODE INTERACTION PROGRESSIVE DAMAGE IN LAMINATED COMPOSITE STRUCTURES WITH AN INITIAL DELAMINAION

This paper presents a failure initiation and progressive damage growth modeling method, including failure mode interaction, for fiber reinforced composite laminates. The present progressive failure analysis (PFA) is targeted at the development of a numerical model for predicting an initial failure mode and consequent damage growth interacting with other failure mechanisms at multiple length scales in the composite structure. The PFA is also coupled with a stochastic analysis tool to account for material variability and manufacturing inconsistencies, thereby quantifying uncertainty and providing rational predictions for margins of safety. The proposed PFA methodology is applied to an axially-compressed composite panel with an initial delamination for validating its capability of predicting the damage progression due to interactive failure mechanisms in the laminated composite.