Abstract
Accurate determinations of fracture toughness and the bridging law are important for the design and analysis of composite laminates. In this work, based on the Castigliano theorem and the point friction theory, a semi-analytical method for mode-II fracture toughness and bridging law is established. ENF tests on T800 carbon/epoxy laminates are carried out and fracture toughness are obtained. Public data from laminates made by other different materials are also used for verification. It is found the fracture toughness calculated by the semi-analytical method agree well with experimental results, verifying the accuracy of the proposed method for determining fracture toughness. Furthermore, the relative shear displacement at the pre-crack tip is also calculated and its relation with fracture toughness is established, from which bridging law can be determined by J-integral theory. The determined bridging law is integrated into cohesive zone model for delamination growth modelling. Good agreements between numerical and experimental load–displacement curves exhibit, which further verifies the proposed method. Using the proposed method, only experimental load and displacement data are required when determining fracture toughness and bridging law. Problems of unstable crack growth and difficult observation due to the compression of delamination are avoided in a simple and efficient way.
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