Dual cracks propagation behavior in hybrid skin-stiffener joint

There is increasing demand for Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) especially in aerospace engineering. Due to their high specific strength-to-weight ratio, these composites offer more characteristics and considerable advantages when compared to metals. Metals, unlike composites, offer plasticity effects to evade high stress concentrations during post-buckling. Under compressive load, composite structures show a wide range of damage mechanisms where a set of damage modes combined together may lead to the structural collapse. The numerical analysis is conducted to investigate the effect of the dual cracks growth for the cracks embedded between plies of the skin and between plies of the stiffener hat. The dual fractured configuration is loaded to study the impact of dual cracks on load carrying capacity of the skin-stiffener joint and mode of fracture initiation and growth. Numerical method of Virtual Crack Close Technique is applied for predicting interlaminar crack initiation and interlaminar crack growth as well as in-plane crack mechanisms to predict the design of crack free joint.