* Graduate Student.--•

An investigation was performed to study damage development in fiber-reinforced laminated composites induced by transverse concentrated loads. The major focus of the study was to understand fundamentally the damage mechanics in terms of matrix cracking and delami-nation growth, and the interaction between them resulting from a transverse concentrated load. The study was focused on cross-ply laminates only, and the load was introduced quasi-statically through a cylindrical or spherical indenter. Accordingly, the research was divided into two stages: 1) damage induced by a cylindrical indenter and 2) damage induced by a spherical indenter. Analytical models consisting of a contact analysis and a failure analysis were developed for analyzing the damage initiation and growth induced by both loading conditions. Experiments were also performed to generate data needed for the models and to verify the proposed analyses. The predictions based on the models agreed very well wit