Abstract
SummaryCohesive element (CE) is a well‐established finite element for fracture, widely used for the modeling of delamination in composites. However, an extremely fine mesh is usually needed to resolve the cohesive zone, making CE‐based delamination analysis computationally prohibitive for applications beyond the scale of lab coupons. In this work, a new CE‐based method of modeling delamination in composites is proposed to overcome this cohesive zone limit on the mesh density. The proposed method makes use of slender structural elements for the plies, a compatible formulation with adaptive higher‐order integration for the CEs, and the corotational formulation for geometrically nonlinear analysis. The proposed method is verified and validated on the classical benchmark problems of Mode I, II, mixed‐mode delamination, a buckling‐induced delamination problem and a double‐delamination problem. The results show that elements much larger than the cohesive zone length can be used while retaining accuracy.
Highlights
Delamination is a common failure mode in composites
The results show that elements much larger than the cohesive zone length can be used while retaining accuracy
The results demonstrate the capability of the proposed structural Cohesive element (CE) method in predicting accurately the load-displacement responses of the different delamination tests with large elements of up to 5 mm in length
Summary
Delamination is a common failure mode in composites. It often leads to structural disintegration prior to fiber failure, thereby compromising the overall load-carrying capability of composite structures. A possible consequence of this procedure, with excessively reduced interfacial strengths, is that the simulation would predict a numerical cohesive zone much larger than the physical one, leading to overcompliant predictions of structural responses and underpredictions of the peak loads.[6,15] Dávila et al[16] developed a shell CE which was compatible with Mindlin-Reissner shell elements for plies. Their method did not resolve the issue of cohesive zone limit.
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