A fiber bridging model for fatigue delamination in composite materials

A fiber bridging model has been created to examine the effects of bridging on Mode I delamination fatigue fracture in a carbon fiber polymer–matrix composite. The model uses a cohesive zone law that is derived from quasi-static R-curves to determine the bridging energy applied in the bridged region. Timoshenko beam theory and an iterative self-consistent scheme are used to calculate the bridging tractions and displacements. After applying the bridging model to crack propagation data the scatter in the data was significantly reduced and clear trends were observed as a function of temperature that were not apparent previously. This indicated that the model appropriately accounted for the bridging in the experiments. Scanning electron microscopy crack opening displacement measurements were performed to validate the model’s predictions. The measurements showed that the predictions were close to the actual bridging levels in the specimen