Parametric Study of Delamination Analysis in Composites with Cohesive Zone Method

In this article, parametric study is conducted for delamination analysis in composites using three dimensional (3D) solid cohesive elements. The main objective of the study is to investigate the effect of normal mode fracture energy, stiffness of cohesive elements and element size on the damage initiation and propagation utilizing three dimensional (3D) solid cohesive elements in an implicit finite element analysis framework. Parametric study is conducted for Double Cantilever Beam (DCB) and End Notch Flexure (ENF) specimens in ABAQUS with cohesive zone method (CZM) to model the delamination initiation and propagation. For verification purposes, results of the delamination analyses for Double Cantilever Beam (DCB) and End Notch Flexure (ENF) specimens are compared with the experimental and numerical results available in the literature. The composite layups and cohesive zone are generated with 8 node solid elements. In the literature, 3D solid cohesive elements are generally used in combination with explicit solution model because of better convergence characteristics of the explicit finite element analysis. In this study, a step procedure is used in order to perform the delamination analysis by implicit finite element analysis. The analysis results are seen to be compatible with the available experimental and the numerical results available in the literature