Modelling of propagating delaminations in textile reinforced duroplast beams by an enriched shell element formulation

Paper i proceeding, 2015

Manufacturing and delamination testing, of textile reinforced Duroplast beams, have been performed to determine critical fracture energies in mode I, mode II and mixed mode loading. This includes values for growth initiation as well as propagation. For mode II and mixed mode loading, a large scatter in values were observed and no values corresponding to stable crack growth was obtained. Furthermore, an XFEM enriched shell element, which internally can represent multiple interlaminar cracks, have been used to simulate the DCB test. In the numerical simulation, data from the experimental tests have been used as input for a bilinear cohesive zone model. The load-displacement curve from the FE analysis shows good agreement with the corresponding measured curves, although with a somewhat higher stiffness.