Anisotropic Constraint Effects on Interactive Damage Progression of General Lay-up Composites

Abstract

In this paper, a five-layer model is proposed to analyze the anisotropic constraint effects on interactive damage progression. Incorporating this model with the general theory of overall moduli of a cracked body, the effective damage factors proposed by Fan and Zhang in 1993 have been extended as quantitative measures for characterizing the anisotropic constraint effects on damage-induced stiffness reduction of general lay-up composites. By applying the first-order shear deformation plate theory to each sublayer these factors are determined and applied for investigating progressive matrix cracking-delamination interaction. Results show that by this rather unique approach, the intractable problem of anisotropic constraint effects of general lay-up composites on interactive damage progression can be handled in a systematic manner.