Interlaminar fracture toughness of fiber metal laminates Academic Article in Scopus uri icon

abstract

  • © 2015 International Committee on Composite Materials. All rights reserved.In this research, different models were adapted and applied to determine the strain energy release rate of mode-I delamination in double cantilever beam specimens. Three models were considered: Euler-Bernoulli beam on Winkler foundation, Timoshenko beam on Winkler foundation and Timoshenko beam resting on two-parametric elastic foundation. The effective flexural modulus in those models was determined with two different methodologies, plane stress resultant method and plies arrangement method. An experimental investigation was performed to determine interlaminar fracture toughness on fiber metal laminates made of multidirectional and plain weave carbon epoxy composite without and with alternating aluminum alloy 2024-T3 layers. Comparison of the analytical and experimental results is made in order to determine the model which better describes the behavior of the fiber metal laminate. The described models provide explicit closed-form solutions for compliance and strain energy release rate. It was noted that compliance of multidirectional composites is higher than that of plain weave composites. In addition, it was observed that the addition of the metallic layers increased the energy absorption capability of the composite material under mode-I delamination for multidirectional composites; the highest increment on fracture toughness was observed in fiber metal laminates made by multidirectional composite compared with that using woven prepreg.

publication date

  • January 1, 2015