A Cohesive Zone Approach for Fatigue-Driven Delamination Analysis in Composite Materials

A new model for prediction of fatigue-driven delamination in laminated composites is proposed using cohesive interface elements. The presented model provides a link between cohesive elements damage evolution rate and crack growth rate of Paris law. This is beneficial since no additional material parameters are required and the well-known Paris law constants are used. The link between the cohesive zone method and fracture mechanics is achieved without use of effective length which has led to more accurate results. The problem of unknown failure path in calculation of the energy release rate is solved by imposing a condition on the damage model which leads to completely vertical failure path. A global measure of energy release rate is used for the whole cohesive zone which is computationally more efficient compared to previous similar models. The performance of the proposed model is investigated by simulation of well-known delamination tests and comparison against experimental data of the literature.