Localization, delocalization and compression fracture in externally pressurized thick cross-ply (very) long cylindrical shells with material non-linearity: A multi-scale and multi-physics analysis

• Geometric/material non-linearity yields interlaminar shear crippling instability in thick cross-ply shells.
• Onset of localization/delocalization with inverse hardening parameter, n=5, is studied.
• Layer-wise mode II stress intensity factor and energy release rate are computed.
• Shear crippling (kink band) angles at multiple scales (macro/meso, micro and nano) are determined.
• Broadening of the kink band with kink-crack growth is demonstrated.

Compression fracture in carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) involves multiple physical mechanisms operating at multiple scales ranging from angströms to cms and beyond. First, at the macro/meso-scale, combined effects of modal imperfections, transverse shear/normal deformation along with the non-linear hypo-elastic transverse shear (GTT) material property on the emergence of interlaminar shear crippling type instability modes, related to the localization (onset of deformation softening), delocalization (onset of deformation hardening) and propagation of mode II compression fracture/damage, in thick imperfect cross-ply very long cylindrical shells under applied hydrostatic pressure, are investigated. The primary accomplishment is the (hitherto unavailable) computation of the layer-wise mode II stress intensity factor, energy release rate and kink crack band-width, under hydrostatic compression, from a non-linear finite element analysis (FEA), using Maxwell’s construction and Griffith׳s energy balance approach. Numerical results include the effects of hypoelastic (GTT only) material property, on localization and delocalization leading to compression fracture.At the micro-scale, a novel three-dimensional eigenfunction expansion technique, based in part on separation of the cylinder length-variable and partly utilizing a modified Frobenius type series expansion in conjunction with an affine transformation to compute the local stress singularity, in the vicinity of a kinked-fiber/matrix trimaterial junction front. Such computed stress singularities represent a measure of the degree of inherent flaw sensitivity of unidirectional CFRP under compression. Finally, dislocation glide in graphite crystallites plays a dominant role in kink band nucleation and propagation at the nano-meter scale.