On fracture of fibrous composites
The problem of an existing through-the-thickness center notch in a unidirectional fibrous composite is investigated using a homogeneous anisotropic elasticity analysis in conjunction with various crack growth criteria. Tensor polynomial, strain energy density, and normal stress ratio criteria are applied as crack growth direction criteria and compared to experimental observations. For the cases and criteria studied, only the normal stress ratio criterion exhibits an ability to correctly predict crack growth direction. The normal stress ratio criterion is subsequently applied to the same cases as a failure criterion. Comparison with experiment indicates that these predictions exhibit reasonable correlation with observed critical stresses. Finally, the macroscopic approach to the problem used in this study is compared to a microscopic shear lag analysis of experimental results in the literature. The comparison indicates that both approaches yield essentially identical predictions. The comparisons made with other criteria and approaches indicate that application of the normal stress ratio within a macroscopic level analysis has great potential as an approach to modeling composite crack growth.