A Cohesive Zone Approach for Fatigue-Driven Delamination Analysis in Composite Materials

Effect of fatigue loading on stiffness degradation, energy dissipation, and matrix cracking damage of CFRP [±45]3Scomposite laminate

“…The experimental and cohesive zone approach has provided an ideal agreement for composite laminates, open‐hole laminates, adhesive joints, nanocomposites, and biomaterial interfaces . The efficient prediction of crack growth rate, inter‐ply delamination, and residual life under low‐ or high‐cyclic fatigue loading is also possible through CZM approach . The initiation, growth, and postponing of matrix cracks in the vicinity of interface predominantly depends on lay‐up sequence and loading condition .…”

“…25 The efficient prediction of crack growth rate, inter-ply delamination, and residual life under low-or high-cyclic fatigue loading is also possible through CZM approach. [26][27][28][29] The initiation, growth, and postponing of matrix cracks in the vicinity of interface predominantly depends on layup sequence and loading condition. 13 This transverse matrix cracking and the intermediate distance has a significant effect on stiffness reduction.…”

A simulation method for fatigue-driven delamination in layered structures involving non-negligible fracture process zones and arbitrarily shaped crack fronts

“…To overcome this limitation, the calculation of the envelope energy release rate, G max , was done by integration of the traction-separation historical response of the most opened point in the cohesive zone, in the methods proposed in [31,35,38]. This implicitly assumes that the historical energy dissipation of the point at the crack tip is comparable to the macroscopic energy release rate, thus, assuming self-similar crack growth.…”

“…In this case, the propagation direction must be determined in advance. On the other hand, the methods in [34,38] rely on the computation of the spatial derivatives of certain quantities in the CZM formulation along the propagation direction. However, the lack of efficient formulations for the identification of the crack propagation direction prevented these models of being applicable to 3D analysis of delamination.…”

“…Moreover, it does not include any fitting parameter. It is worth mentioning that, although some of the most recent methods [33,35,38] were not benchmarked in [32], either they are based on any of the previous models or they are not formulated for their applicability to 3D structures.…”