Modified DEBA for determining size dependent shear fracture energy of laminates

It has been argued that fracture energy of composite laminates depends on their thickness and number of layers. In this paper a modified direct energy balance approach (DEBA) has been developed to evaluate the mode-II shear fracture energy for E-glass/Epoxy laminates from finite element model at an arbitrary thickness. This approach considers friction and damage/plasticity deformations using cohesive zone modeling (CZM) and nonlinear finite element modeling. The presence of compressive stress and resulting friction was argued to be a possible cause for the thickness dependency of fracture energy. In the finite element modeling, CZM formulation has been developed with bilinear cohesive constitutive law combined with friction consideration. Also ply element have been developed with shear plastic damage model. Modified direct energy balance approach has been proposed for estimation of mode-II shear fracture energy. Experiments were performed on laminates of glass epoxy specimens for characterization of material parameters and determination of mode-II fracture energies for different thicknesses. Effect of laminate thickness on fracture energy of transverse crack tension (TCT) and end notched flexure (ENF) specimens has been numerically studied and comparison with experimental results has been made. It is shown that the developed numerical approach is capable of estimating increase in fracture energy due to size effect.