Phase field modelling of microscopic failure in composite laminates
Xiaofei Hu, Peng Zhang, Weian Yao
Abstract
The previous study of the authors on a phase field method for modelling progressive failure in multi-phase materials is further extended in this study to capture microscopic failure processes in composite laminates. The auxiliary phase field model for the regularization of material interface is re-formulated. In the computational model, a small part of the model is built from microscopic length scale to explicitly consider the microstructure of the material while the other area is built from macroscopic length scale to improve the efficiency. Cohesive elements are employed to link the two mesh parts with different length scales and also to capture the intralaminar failure. The existing ABAQUS subroutine “UEL” has been rewritten for the present study due to the introduction of cohesive elements and a BFGS solver is used to improve the iteration stability. The thickness effect of a thin ply made laminate is considered and the crack suppression effect is investigated.