Delamination is an important concern in the context of structural behaviour of laminated composite materials. It is known that delamination can diminish the stiffness and the strength of the material and promote structural failure. Delamination onset and growth is governed by interlaminar fracture toughness of the material. Delamination propagation is frequently dominated by mode II fracture; c...

This paper reviews recent research on cement based composites design for damage tolerance. Specific focus is placed on the influence of fiber and interface properties on the complementary energy of the composite crack bridging behavior, which in turn governs the mechanics of composite fracture. The theoretical concepts are illustrated with examples of highly damage tolerant cement based composi...

Delamination is a predominant failure mechanism in composite structures. In the present study, double cantilever beam tests were performed to investigate the effects of temperature and fiber orientation on the Mode I interlaminar fracture toughness, G I , of carbon fiber-reinforced epoxy composites, T800H/#3631. The values of G I for three kinds of laminates, [0 12 //0 12 ], [22.5/-22.5/0 8 /-2...

Understanding the role played by the microstructure of materials on their macroscopic failure properties is an important challenge in solid mechanics. Indeed, when a crack propagates at a heterogeneous brittle interface, the front is trapped by tougher regions and deforms. This pinning induces non-linearities in the crack propagation problem, even within Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics theory...

Little is known about fracture toughness of monomer-impregnated wood biocomposites, with no data for transparent wood. For building applications, important, but the anisotropic nature generates complex stress distributions that needs to be accounted for. A four-point bending mechanics test combined digital image correlation (DIC) measurements displacement fields and finite element model updatin...

Fracture toughness, critical strain energy release rate, and critical stress intensity factor were determined for experimental and commercial restorative resins. A composite resin had lower resistance to crack initiation than an unfilled acrylic resin. The data were consistent with surface failure observed in single-pass wear studies of these resins.

ÐThe high-temperature fatigue-crack propagation and fracture resistance of a model g-TiAl intermetallic composite reinforced with 20 vol.% ductile b-TiNb particles is examined at elevated temperatures of 650 and 8008C and compared with behavior at room temperature. TiNb reinforcements are found to enhance the fracture toughness of g-TiAl, even at high temperatures, from about 12 to 040 MPa m, a...

Data for fracture in human humeral cortical bone are re-analyzed to assess the validity for this material of linear-elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM), which is the standard method of analyzing toughness and one basis for analyzing clinical data relating to bone quality. A nonlinear fracture model, which is based on representing the damage zone in the bone by a cohesive model, is calibrated agai...