A cohesive phase-field model for intra-laminar damage in fabric composite laminates

The phase-field paradigm provides a robust damage modelling approach which is equipped with capabilities of automatically predicting initiation, propagation, branching and merging of complex curvilinear crack topologies. To this point, phase-field modelling has been widely applied to study brittle fractures based on Griffith’s theory, with some extensions also to ductile and cohesive fractures. Despite its immense popularity, its application to complex high-performance materials, for e.g. composites, has been limited. This is because most composites are not brittle in the Griffith’s sense. Rather, they display quasi-brittle fracture characteristics wherein a crack is driven by cohesive forces present within the fracture process zone, which spans over a domain sufficiently large in comparison to the overall structure. As a result, industrial applications of phase-field method for composites using commercial software has not been much widespread, also due to its requirements of finer discretization and associated high computational costs. This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 807097. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the Clean Sky 2 JU members other than the Union. The results, opinions, conclusions, etc. presented in this work are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily represent the position of the JU; the JU is not responsible for any use made of the information contained herein