Quantitative evaluation of the severity of wrinkles in carbon fiber composites

Abstract

A new method combining three-dimensional digital image correlation (3D-DIC) with a novel numerical framework was proposed to evaluate the severity of wrinkles in composite laminates. In this numerical framework, the micromechanics model of wrinkles based on a two-step homogenization technique was embedded in three-dimensional finite element method (FEM). The influence of waviness ratio (the ratio of wrinkle amplitude to wavelength) and stacking sequence on mechanical behaviors of wrinkled laminates under axial tension load was studied. Numerical results showed that the out-of-plane displacement in the vicinity of wrinkle zones obviously increases by 10%–20%. The simulation was then verified by experimental observations.

Keywords:

• Composite laminate
• computation method
• wrinkle defects
• digital image correlation
• quantitative evaluation

Acknowledgements

The authors also acknowledge the experimental assistance from Prof. Xiaogui Wang and Yangjian Xu of Zhejiang University of Technology.

Data availability

The raw/processed data required to reproduce these findings cannot be shared at this time as the data also forms part of an ongoing study.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This research is financially supported by National Key Research & Development Program of China (Grant Nos. 2019YFB1504801), Key Research & Development Program of Zhejiang Province (Grant Nos. 2020C01118) and Zhejiang Province natural science foundation of China (Grant No. LQ17E050007).