Abstract
The present paper is concerned with modelling damage and fracture in notched woven fabric composites. Previous experimental work has shown that, under tensile loading, damage at a notch in a variety of glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP) and carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) composites based on woven fabric reinforcement comprises matrix damage and fibre tow fracture along the plane of maximum stress. It is these experimental observations that inform the failure modelling developed here, in which a cohesive zone approach is used within a two-dimensional extended finite element method framework. The traction–separation parameters used in the extended finite element method implementation are based on previously reported experimental measurements for the strength and toughness of the woven fabric materials under investigation. The approach is shown to provide predictions of notched strength that are in very good agreement with experimental results from the literature for a range of glass fibre reinforced plastic and carbon fibre reinforced plastic woven fabric systems and also agree well with results obtained from closed form analytical models, which require calibration.
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