Progressive failure analysis on scaled open-hole tensile composite laminates

Despite the rapid advances of numerical methods and theoretical models for progressive failure analysis of composites, it’s still a challenge to predict the strength and damage progression of composite laminates under open-hole tension (OHT). One of the main obstacles is to capture the true stress concentration at the hole edge. It has been found that the formation of longitudinal splitting at early loading stage alleviates the extremely high stress concentration. The purpose of this study is to develop an efficient progressive damage model, employing surface-based cohesive contacts for longitudinal splitting and delamination, to predict the thickness size effect of sublaminate scaled and ply-level scaled laminates under OHT. It is found that by using aligned mesh with the fiber direction for each ply, a good correlation with experimental results can be achieved for both strengths and failure modes of the laminates.