Research on the tension damage behavior of sandwich composite L-joints: Experiment and simulation

This article studies the failure process of Composite Sandwich L-joints under tension load. Test results show that damage has already taken place well before the loading force reaches the maximum. The failure process is divided into three stages based on the damage initiation force and damage expansion force identified through test data. A new failure criterion is proposed to describe the behavior of the laminate skin. The application of this criterion requires merely common engineering parameters. Simulation result using this new criterion matches both the failure load and the damage process of the experiment, while simulation using other mainstream criteria report much lower ultimate forces.