Cohesive zone and level set method for simulation of high cycle fatigue delamination in composite materials

Abstract

This paper deals with high cycle fatigue delamination in composite materials. The cohesive zone approach along with the level set method is used to simulate fatigue-driven delamination growth. The cohesive zone method is used for calculation of the energy release rate at the crack front because of its superiority over the virtual crack closure technique (VCCT) for bi-material interfaces and non selfsimilar crack growth. Evolution of the crack front in 3D during fatigue growth is handled with the level set method. The damage variable in the cohesive zone formulation is changed according to the updated level set field. Benchmarks are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach in simulation of 3D delamination growth under fatigue loading.

Study on Crack Growth of Ferromagnetic Pipeline Weld based on Magnetic-Structural Coupling

“…The growth of cracks can be calculated through comparison of crack tip energy release rate, and the critical energy release rate of the cracking material can be calculated based on energy release rate principles [13][14][15][16]. Strain-energy release rate G refers to the energy release rate of crack growth, which is a measurement parameter of material fracture toughness.…”

A computationally-efficient micromechanical model for the fatigue life of unidirectional composites under tension-tension loading

“…c) The Paris law constants of the interface (C II int and m II int ) have an important effect on the composite S-N curves predicted by the model. Despite the lack of experimental results to determine these constants for interfacial debonding, an estimation of these parameters was made (see Table 4) based on values found in the literature [16,[23][24][25][26][27] for mode-II delamination propagation. This motivated the parametric study presented in Section 3.3 to demonstrate the sensitivity of the model to these parameters.…”

“…The growth rate of matrix cracks and interfacial debonds can be modelled by a Paris power law [17][18][19][20], and is affected by the quality of the bonding between the fibres and the matrix, which is often controlled by surface treatments on the fibres [6,21,22]. Determining the Paris law constants for crack propagation along the fibre-matrix interface is a challenging task: in the literature, a wide scatter of data can be found for the values of Paris law constants for mode-II debonding/delamination in composite materials [16,[23][24][25][26][27]; moreover, there are also only a few experimental studies for the Paris law constants for interfacial debonding around individual fibres [28] and no experimental data for debonding around small bundles of fibres.…”

An improved delamination fatigue cohesive interface model for complex three-dimensional multi-interface cases

“…Nguyen et al [9] and Yang et al [10] developed the CZM approach to model generic fatigue crack growth, while Robinson et al [11] focused on the delamination propagation in composite materials, followed by Turon et al [12], Harper and Hallett [13], Bak et al. [14], Nojavan et al [15] and Amiri-Rad et al [16]. Early work of extending traditional cohesive elements to fatigue cohesive elements [12,13] required an estimation of the cohesive fatigue length ahead of the numerical crack tip, which is dependent on the geometry and loading configuration [17].…”

“…Although a solution is provided in their later research [21], the use of a complicated two-step finite element analysis, along with an estimated initiation zone length, makes this difficult to implement for complex three-dimensional problems. It should be noted that some of the above models [11,[14][15][16][17] were implemented with single-integration-point elements, since the simple relationship of one integration point to one element makes it much easier for implementation. In most static analysis though, four-integration-points elements are preferred due to their better robustness and precision.…”