A sandwich three-point bend specimen for testing mode-I interlaminar fracture toughness for fiber-reinforced composite materials

A sandwich three-point bend specimen has recently been proposed to test mode-I interlaminar fracture toughness for fiber-reinforced composite materials. The test composite consist of a thin layer bonded by two lateral reusable steel bars (Sohn et al. 1995). Some time earlier this specimen configuration was used to test fracture toughness of adhesives (Zdaniewsk et al. 1987). However, formulae for analysing its fracture mechanics parameters such as stress intensity factor and energy release rate can not be found in the literature. The lack of adequate formulae may explain why suitable quantitative analysis using this specimen configuration has not been achieved. In this paper, a simple and effective homogenisation method is used to change the bi-material system, which represents the specimen, into single uniform test material. This physical homogenisation is carried out by geometric change of the cross section of lateral steel parts based on equal deflection rigidity. For the transformed specimen configuration of single uniform material, the corresponding stress intensity factor solution from handbooks is available. Two formulae of stress intensity factor for the sandwich three-point bend specimen are given as upper limit and lower limit respectively, they are plotted with varying elastic tensile modulus mismatch. Then the relation between stress intensity factor and energy release rate, with special consideration of orthotropy of the tested composite material, is used to derive its energy release rate. The specimen and its formulae can also be applied to test other materials such as wood, welded joints (Burstow and Ainsworth, 1995), as well as to test dynamic fracture toughness.