Determination of Fracture Parameters for Multiple Cracks of Laminated Composite Finite Plate

A predictive method for estimation of stress state at zone of crack tip and assessment of remaining component lifetime depend on the stress intensity factor (SIF). This paper discusses the numerical approach for prediction of first ply failure load (F_L), progressive failure load, SIF and critical SIF for multiple cracks configurations of laminated composite finite plate using finite element method (FEM). The Hashin and Chang failure criterion are incorporated in ABAQUS using subroutine approach user defined field variables (USDFLD) for prediction of progressive fracture response of laminated composite finite plate, which is not directly available in the software. A tensile experiment on laminated composite finite plate with stress concentration is performed to validate the numerically predicted subroutine results, shows excellent agreement. The typical results are presented to examine effect of changing the crack tip distance (S), crack offset distance (H), and stacking fiber angle (θ) on F_L, and SIF .