Delamination analysis of holed composite laminates using interface elements

In this paper interface element with de-cohesive constitutive law is used to predict the failure load of laminates containing a central hole in which delamination is the dominant failure mode of them. For this purpose, the initiation and propagation of interlaminar crack are modeled using our in hose FEM code. It is shown that at a certain load step, the interface elements between the two layers of − 45∘ and 0∘ fail abruptly. It is also shown that the predicted failure stresses of laminates with various thicknesses are in an acceptable agreement with the experimental results.