Achieving gradual failure in hybrid composite laminates- progressing from tension to beding

Most of the progress to-date about achieving gradual failure have been mainly focused on in-plane loading and particularly tension. In many real structural applications, the load is not pure in-plane and is a mix of in-plane and transverse. One of the most common more complicated load cases is bending, happens in many structural elements from sport equipment to wind-turbine blades. This paper is the authors’ original work to take the lessons learned in in-plane loading and implement it into cases dominated with out-of-plane bending loads. The aim is to achieve gradual failure and pseudo-ductility from composite beam under bending.