Crack initiation in brittle materials is not covered by classical fracture mechanics that deals only with the growth of pre-existing cracks. In order to overcome this deficiency, the Finite Fracture Mechanics concept assumes the instantaneous formation of cracks of finite size at initiation. Within this framework, a coupled criterion was proposed at the beginning of the 2000’s requiring two necessary conditions to be fulfilled simultaneously. The first one compares the tensile stress to the tensile strength, while the other uses an energy balance and the material toughness. The present analysis is restricted to the 2D case, and, through a wide list of references, it is shown that this criterion gives predictions in agreement with experiments in various cases of stress concentration, which can be classified in two categories: the singularities, i.e. indefinitely growing stresses at a point, and the non-singular stress raisers. It is applied to different materials and structures: notched specimens, laminates, adhesive joints or embedded inclusions. Of course, a lot of work remains to do in these domains but also in domains that are almost not explored such as fatigue loadings and dynamic loadings as well as a sound 3D extension. Some ideas in these directions are issued before concluding that FFM and the coupled criterion have filled a gap in fracture mechanics.

A review of Finite Fracture Mechanics: crack initiation at singular and non-singular stress raisers

Progressive damage modeling of open-hole composite laminates under compression

Delamination prediction in composite laminates under low-velocity impact

The emergence of advanced computational methods and theoretical models for damage progression in composites has heralded the promise of virtual testing of composite structures with orthotropic lay-ups, complex geometries and multiple material systems. Recent studies have revealed that specimen size and material orthotropy has a major effect on the open hole tension (OHT) strength of composite laminates. The aim of this investigation is develop a progressive failure model for orthotropic composite laminates, employing stepwise discretization of the traction–separation relationship, to predict the effect of specimen size and laminate orthotropy on the OHT strength. The results show that a significant interaction exists between delamination and in-plane damage, so that models without considering delamination would over-predict strength. Furthermore, it is found that the increase in fracture toughness of blocked plies must be incorporated in the model to achieve good correlation with experimental results.

Modelling complex progressive failure in notched composite laminates with varying sizes and stacking sequences

Finite Fracture Mechanics model for mixed mode fracture in adhesive joints

A new model based on finite fracture mechanics is proposed to predict the open-hole tensile strength of composite laminates. Failure is predicted when both stress-based and energy-based criteria are satisfied. The material properties required by the model are the ply elastic properties, and the laminate unnotched strength and fracture toughness. No empirical adjusting parameters are required. Using experimental data obtained in quasi-isotropic carbon–epoxy laminates it is concluded that the model predictions are very accurate, resulting in improvements over the traditional strength prediction methods. It also is shown that the proposed finite fracture mechanics model can be used to predict the brittleness of different combinations of materials and geometries.

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S. Mahdi

Papers

A finite fracture mechanics model for the prediction of the open-hole strength of composite laminates

Size effects on the tensile and compressive failure of notched composite laminates

An energy based failure criterion for matrix crack induced delamination in laminated composite structures