Flexural behaviour modelling of carbon/epoxy laminates using the puck-EWM approach

ABSTRACT

To develop continuous fibre compos laminates and fabrics in the aeronautics and aerospace industry, a thorough understanding of the behaviour of these materials under various loading conditions is required. The purpose of this work aims to assess the failure of different composite materials subjected to a bending load, using the progressive damage approach. Puck’s failure criteria and gradual degradation model have been used to simulate the initial and the successive damage, respectively. A user-defined material (UMAT) subroutine has been developed and implemented through finite element software Abaqus. Moreover, the effect of geometrical parameters is performed and identified by the experimental protocol. The predicted results obtained by this numerical modelling show a good correlation with the findings of the experimental test.

KEYWORDS:

• Puck’s failure criteria
• Element weakening method
• Progressive damage model
• Three-point bending test
• User-defined material model (Umat)
• Damage mode

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editors and reviewers for their constructive comments and their helpful suggestions, which helped us to improve the quality of this paper in order to make it appropriate for publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).