In-plane shear and transverse damage evolution modeling of carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic laminates based on transverse cracking

A micromechanics-based simplification was introduced into the continuum damage mechanics (CDM) method for carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRPs) to reduce the number of tests required to identify the evolution of in-plane shear and transverse damage. The energy release rate associated with transverse cracking was also introduced as an independent thermodynamic force to characterize both damage evolutions. The evolution of in-plane shear damage was obtained from incremental cyclic tensile tests on ±45° laminates and analytically converted into the evolution of transverse crack density. The transverse crack density was then used to characterize the evolution of transverse damage. Three distinct analytical models were employed to correlate transverse crack density with in-plane shear and transverse damage, and their efficiency was compared. The proposed method enabled the simultaneous measurement of in-plane shear and transverse damage evolution solely from incremental cyclic tensile tests on ±45° laminates. Furthermore, the results showed that the energy release rate associated with transverse cracking effectively governed the evolution of both in-plane shear and transverse damage in CFRPs.