A Method of Nonlinear Damage Analysis for Anisotropic Materials and Its Application to Thin Composite Laminates

A method of analysis describing the damage response of anisotropic brittle materials introduced earlier by the authors is generalized based on the concepts of damage surface and damage potential. The applicability and validity of the method is demonstrated by characterizing, for the first instance, the behavior of composite lamina, and then, the damage response of thin, continuous, and symmetric composite laminate subjected to in- plane loading. The global constitutive equation of the laminate with damage is derived from that of lamina and its interaction with other laminae. The method developed is finally applied to examine damage characteristics of angle-ply laminates subjected to in-plane loading, and a satisfactory agreement between the predicted and experimental results dem onstrates the viability of the proposed method.