Progressive Damage Modeling of Notched Composites

Abstract

There is an increased interest in using non-crimp fabric reinforced composites for primary and secondary structural components in high performance automobile applications in order to accomplish desired mass savings. However, one of the main challenges in implementing these composites is the lack of understanding of damage progression under a wide variety of loading conditions for general configurations. Towards that end, researchers at GM and NASA are developing new damage models to predict accurately the progressive failure of these composites. In this investigation, the developed progressive failure analysis model has been applied to study damage progression in center-notched and open-hole tension specimens for various laminate schemes. A segment of this effort was focused on a detailed study with respect to the effect of element size on the analysis outcome, which is presented here.