Oblique plies for steering through-thickness delamination migration in fiber-reinforced polymers

The damage tolerance of safety-critical aerospace structures is of paramount importance to ensure the airworthiness and safe operation of an aircraft. The ongoing transition from metallic to composite airframes requires a change in design philosophy to accommodate the fundamentally different behavior of composite structures in the event of damage, if future designs are not to be constrained or compromised, resulting in an inability to fully exploit the significant potential offered by composites. This work presents a feasibility study for an innovative method by which delaminations (a fundamental damage mechanism) can be steered through the thickness of a composite laminate. Plies with fibers oriented in the propagation direction are angled through the thickness in order to guide delamination migration. Static testing (mode 1) has shown the viability of this mechanism. In addition, a significant increase in fracture toughness, ranging from 88 to 269% (depending on the configuration), is observed due to de...

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