Investigation of delamination and interlaminar fracture toughness assessment of glass/epoxy composite by acoustic emission

Delamination is the most common failure mode in composite materials. It takes place in different modes, i.e. mode I, mode II or the combination of these modes. The present study is concerned with an investigation of mechanical and acoustic emission behavior of delamination. In this work, various lay-ups of glass/epoxy composite laminates have been used to study the delamination behavior when subjected to mode I, mode II and the mixed-mode I/II tests. First, the characterization of load-displacement curves of the specimens is done based on the AE parameters and mechanical responses and the curves were divided into three parts. The crack growth in the mode I was stable state and in the mixed-mode and mode II was unstable. In the next, interlaminar fracture toughness of the specimens, Gc, were measured using standard methodologies and acoustomechanical methodologies which is based on the mechanical behavior and AE information. It was found that the acoustomechanical method presents the lower limit of the interlaminar fracture toughness and agrees with the results that obtained from standard. The images were captured with Scanning electron microscope (SEM) from damage surfaces verifies the results that obtained from Acoustic emission