The use of notched specimens to generate design allowable is common practice among aircraft designers. This article assesses the limitations of open-hole tests and emphasizes the importance of numerical simulations to produce notched strength data for structural design allowable. Using numerical simulations, failure envelopes of open-hole specimens were obtained for two different quasi-isotropic carbon fiber-epoxy laminates, namely, [π/4]: [45/90/-45/0] 4s and [π/3]: [0/ ± 60]5s. It was demonstrated that open-hole tests produce data that is very limited to the specific loading conditions and, therefore, shall not be directly applied to structural design.
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