Date of Award
Summer 1996
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Program/Concentration
Engineering Mechanics
Committee Director
R. Prabhakaran
Committee Director
C. E. Harris
Committee Member
Y. Mikata
Committee Member
S. Cupschalk
Abstract
An investigation of translaminate fracture and a progressive damage methodology was conducted to evaluate and develop residual strength prediction capability for laminated composites with through penetration notches. This is relevant to the damage tolerance of an aircraft fuselage that might suffer an in-flight accident such as an uncontained engine failure. An experimental characterization of several composite materials systems revealed an R-curve type of behavior. Fractographic examinations led to the postulate that this crack growth resistance could be due to fiber bridging, defined here as fractured fibers of one ply bridged by intact fibers of an adjacent ply.
The progressive damage methodology is currently capable of predicting the initiation and growth of matrix cracks and fiber fracture. Using two different fiber failure criteria, residual strength was predicted for different size panel widths and notch lengths. A ply discount fiber failure criterion yielded extremely conservative results while an elastic-perfectly plastic fiber failure criterion showed that the fiber bridging concept is valid for predicting residual strength for tensile dominated failure loads. Furthermore, the R-curves predicted by the model using the elastic-perfectly plastic fiber failure criterion compared very well with the experimental R-curves.
Rights
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
DOI
10.25777/03r7-dz29
ISBN
9780591442595
Recommended Citation
Coats, Timothy W..
"A Progressive Damage Methodology for Residual Strength Predictions of Center-Crack Tension Composite Panels"
(1996). Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Dissertation, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Old Dominion University, DOI: 10.25777/03r7-dz29
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/mae_etds/185