Abstract
In Part I of this two-part paper, a cracked fibre-reinforced angle-ply composite laminate is analysed using fracture mechanics. Based upon this analysis, a set of in situ strength parameters for unidirectional laminae in a multidirectional laminate is proposed. The in situ strength parameters take into account the influence of adjacent laminae and thickness of a particular lamina upon its transverse tensile and in-plane shear strengths when it is used in a multidirectional laminate. These strength parameters are then employed to calculate a stress norm which determines how close the stress state in the lamina is to its failure state. In the companion paper (Part II), the stress norm is incorporated into the formalism of an optimization problem in order to enhance the load bearing capacity of multidirectional laminates.
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