FRACTURE TESTING AND MICROMECHANICAL ANALYSIS OF PULTRUDED COMPOSITES

Abstract eng:
An experimental and analytical study is carried out to characterize the fracture behavior of fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) pultruded composites. The composite material system used in this study consists of roving and continuous filament mat (CFM) layers with E-glass fiber and polyester matrix materials. Eccentrically loaded single-edge-notch-tension ESE(T) fracture toughness specimen were cut with the roving transverse to the loading direction from a monolithic pultruded plate with 0.5" thickness. The fracture toughness of this material is characterized for a notch parallel to the roving direction, the plane with the lowest fracture toughness. A three-dimensional (3D) micromechanical constitutive model is developed and calibrated for the composite material system. This nonlinear constitutive model is a combination of nested micromechanical models for the roving and CFM layers. The ability of the proposed micromodel to predict the effective elastic properties as well as the nonlinear response under multi-axial stress states is verified and compared to the stress-strain response from off-axis tests. The 3D constitutive model is used with a cohesive layer in a finite element analysis (FE) to study the fracture response. The properties for the cohesive layer were calibrated from an ESE(T) specimen with the ratio a/W=0.5. Good prediction from the proposed model is reported for a range of notch sizes and geometries.

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