Abstract
Cracked composite plates with spherical glass inclusions bonded inside a flexible matrix made of an epoxy polymer were subjected to impact. The effect of the inclusions on an edge crack propagating inside the plate was investigated, as well as the interaction of two skew-parallel edge cracks propagating in the same composite plates. It was found that gen erally the inclusions repel the cracks in both cases studied, and they are responsible for the bifurcations of the propagating cracks. A crack arrest phenomenon also appeared at the neighborhood of inclusions, which was followed by a subsequent emission backwards of Rayleigh waves. Moreover, the skew-parallel cracks always attracted each other, although the inclusions provoked the cracks to deviate from their initial paths. For the study of crack propagation inside these composite plates the optical method of caustics was used for the evaluation of the crack velocities, as well as the instantaneous values of the dyanmic stress-intensity factor Kr(t) and K rr(t) at the crack tips. Interesting results were derived concerning the variation of the velocities and SIFs of the cracks inside particulate- filled plates.
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