A New Method for Modeling of Initiation and Propagation of Delamination Between [0/θo] Layers of Laminated Composites

In this article, initiation and propagation of delamination of a double cantilevered beam (DCB) is studied. The delamination of DCB specimen occurs between 0 o and θ 0 layers. Due to damage induced, during the loading, in the matrix of θ 0 layer, virtual crack closure technique (VCCT) as a well known method for simulation of initiation and propagation of the delamination for DCB is not able to model the propagation of delamination properly. To overcome this shortcoming, the stiffness of the damaged θ 0 layer is decreased with a developed technique in this study. The stiffness reduction technique (SR) is introduced in this paper to model the induced cracks in the matrix of the θ 0 layer. Then the stiffness reduction technique is coupled with the critical length parameter. The presented method is called stiffness reduction—critical length (SR-CL) method. By using SR-CL method, initiation and propagation of delamination for a $$ \left[ {{{\left( {0_2^o/{{90}^o}} \right)}_6}/0_2^o//{\theta^o}/{{\left( {0_2^o/{{90}^o}} \right)}_6}/0_2^o} \right] $$ configuration in which θ = 0o, 22.5o, 45o, 67.5o, 90o and for a cross ply laminate (0°/90°) 12 are modeled. The obtained results are in very good agreements with experimental data.