Irene Guiamatsia

Automatic Insertion of Cohesive Elements for Delamination Modelling

Composite damage modelling with cohesive elements has initially been limited to the analysis of interface damage or delamination. However, their use is also being extended to the analysis of inplane tensile failure arising from matrix or fibre fracture. These interface elements are typically placed at locations where failure is likely to occur, which infers a certain a priori knowledge of the crack propagation path(s). In the case of a crack jump for example, the location of the jump is usually not obvious, and the simulation would require the placement of cohesive elements at all element faces. A better option, presented here, is to determine the potential location of cohesive elements and insert them during the analysis. The aim of this work is to enable the determination of the crack path, as part of the solution process. A subroutine has been developed and implemented in the commercial finite element package ABAQUS/Standard[1] in order to automatically insert cohesive elements within a pristine model, on the basis of the analysis of the current stress field. Results for the prediction of delamination are presented in this paper.

Improving composite damage modelling through automatic placement of cohesive elements

Numerous experimental studies of damage in composite laminates have shown that intralaminar (in-plane) matrix cracks lead to interlaminar delamination (out-of-plane) at ply interfaces. The smearing of in-plane cracks over a volume, as a consequence of the use of continuum damage mechanics, does not always effectively capture the full extent of the interaction between the two failure mechanisms. A more accurate representation is obtained by adopting a discrete crack approach via the use of cohesive elements, for both in-plane and out-of-plane damage.

Crack modelling using the material point method and a strong discontinuity approach

Modern numerical techniques utilised to model crack propagation tend to be optimized for tracking the evolution of a single crack. Real fracture processes are however complex, involving the initiation and propagation of opening (activated) cracks, while other may close (deactivate) and undergo frictional dissipations. Accounting for the correct loss of energy (through debonding and friction) is essential to achieving a realistic description of the fracture process. One common strategy has been to make small adaptations to traditional techniques to tackle multiple cracking, in effect relying on extensive complicated computational algorithms. A typical example is the use of cohesive models in combination with the eXtended finite Element method where cracks, sometimes intersecting, need to be defined explicitly. In this study the Material Point Method is used for the analysis of fracture propagation. Crack states, as internal variables, are stored within the material points and mapped as strong discontinuities to the elements during the Lagrangian phase of the solution. Consequently, material points carrying cracks of different sizes and orientations are allowed to cohabit within the same element, yielding a natural description of the fracture/fragmentation process. The three-point bending test is used to demonstrate the features of the new approach.

Finite-Element Modelling of the Impact Behaviour of Aluminium Nacre-Like Composite

The demand for energy-absorbing lightweight structures for impact applications in automotive, aerospace and defence industry is rapidly growing, posing a challenge for innovative engineering design to maintain lightweight without reducing damage tolerance and impact and shock absorption. In this context, biological materials offer a source of inspiration for the design of new materials. Nacre, commonly known as the mother-of-pearl, is a biological material that exhibits outstanding mechanical properties due to its hierarchical structure, which includes a brick-like pattern, layer waviness and interface. Although nacre is made of 95% of aragonite, a brittle material, its toughness is about 3000 larger than that of aragonite. Research addressing the behaviour of nacre-like engineering composites is limited and this work intends to contribute to the understanding of such materials under impact loading. In this paper, the study of the impact behaviour of layered nacre-like plates made of 1-mm thick tablets of aluminium alloy 7075 glued with toughened epoxy resin is performed using Abaqus/Explicit. A 9-mm steel spherical projectile with initial impact velocities in the range of 400-900 m/s is used. The epoxy material is modelled using a user-defined cohesive element that accounts for the experimentally observable increase in both strength and toughness in compression. Target thicknesses of 5 and 7 mm are modelled. The ballistic performance of bulk plates made of bulk Al-7075 is compared with that of nacre-like composite plates of the same thickness. It is found that the nacre-like structures performed slightly better than the bulk plate for high impact velocities with a reduction of about 9% in the residual velocity; however, for lower impact velocities close to the ballistic limit, nacre-like plates performed worse than the bulk plate. The higher performance at higher impact velocities of the nacre-like composites is attributed to the hierarchical structure that enables both localized energy absorption by deformation of the metallic tablet and tablet interlocking due to the waviness and inter-layered delamination, which allows plastic deformation further away from the impact zone. It is concluded that nacre-like aluminium composite plates should be further investigated for their potential in designing protective structures because they could enable substantial improvements in weight-savings and in the ballistic performance of the structure. However, a quantitative assessment of their benefit warrants further numerical and experimental research.

A cohesive model with frictional effects on strength and stiffness under transverse compression

Failure develops and propagates through a structure via a complex sequence of competing micro-mechanisms occurring simultaneously. While the active mechanism of surface debonding is the source of loss of stiffness and cohesion, friction between cracked surfaces, upon their closure, acts as a passive dissipation mechanism behind the quasi-brittleness and hence can increase the toughness of the material under favorable loading conditions. In order to numerically study damage propagation, the constitutive response must be able to faithfully capture, both qualitatively and quantitatively, one of the signature characteristic of failure: the energy dissipation. In this paper, we present an interface decohesive model for discrete fracture that is able to capture the apparent enhancement of interfacial properties that is observed when transverse compressive loads are applied. The model allows to seamlessly account for the additional frictional dissipation that occurs when the loading regime involves transverse compression, whether during debonding or after full delamination. This constitutive model is then used to successfully predict the response of realistic engineering structures under generalized loading conditions as demonstrated with the numerical simulation of a fiber push-out test.

Element-Free Galerkin Modelling of Crack Migration in Composite Laminates

The development of a virtual testing environment, as a cost-efiective industrial design tool in the design and analysis of composite structures, requires the need to create models e‐ciently, as well as accelerate the analysis by reducing the number of degrees of freedom, while still satisfying the need for accurately tracking the evolution of a debond, delamination or crack front. The eventual aim is to simulate both damage initiation and propagation in components with realistic geometrical features, where crack propagation paths are not trivial. Meshless approaches, and the Element-Free Galerkin (EFG) method, are particularly suitable for problems involving changes in topology and have been successfully applied to simulate damage in homogeneous materials and concrete. In this work, the method is utilized to model initiation and mixed-mode propagation of cracks in composite laminates, and to simulate experimentally-observed crack migration which is di‐cult to model using standard flnite element analysis.