Tensile fracture behaviour of notched boron/aluminum composite laminates

Abstract

This paper presents modifications in the stress fracture criteria (known as the point stress criterion and the average stress criterion), developed by Whitney and Nuismer to predict the tensile strength of composite laminates containing holes and cracks. A simple relation is used for the characteristic lengths to take care of the notch size dependence, which can improve the accuracy while evaluating the notched strength of composite laminates. The applicability of the simple relation is examined by considering a good amount of fracture data on boron/ aluminium laminates. The present procedure correlates well with the test data on circular hole specimens as well as various cracked configurations and confirms that the approach can be applied for tensile strength estimations of notched composite laminates.