Determination of fatigue cracking direction in composite laminates

The interface plays the central role in the failure analysis of composite laminates, therefore, the interface material properties are taken as the independent parameters. A simple, universal and practicable criterion, i.e. a ratio criterion of strain energy release rate, is proposed to determine the growing direction of a fatigue crack in the composite laminates. The method of arbitrary lines, which is very effective to solve the problems with high gradient feature, is used to analyze the experimental results at the key moments when a crack kinks, turns into the interface, or bifurcates. An approximate method of computing the energy release rate is given. The fatigue fracture tests of composite laminates are carried out, and the numerical predictions of crack growing directions agree well with the experimental results. It is concluded that the methods suggested in this paper are effective to obtain the cracking history and the growing path of a fatigue crack in composite laminates.