The Effect of Apparent Crack-Tip on Predictive Capabilities of Resin Infused Composite Elements Under Pull-Off Loading

Abstract

It is often seen that the nature of delamination and disbond in composite structures is different than that observed within coupon-level experiments that are used to design the structure. These effects are exacerbated in non-unidirectional tape composite laminates in which the local architectures can influence the crack growth behavior. For these materials, the assumptions of linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) are challenged by the influence of the hierarchical nature of the material resulting in disparate apparent crack growth behavior. In this paper, resin infused and stitched resin infused sub-element models are compared to experimental data to study the effects of apparent crack tip behavior on predictive capability of the model.