3448 - MICROMECHANICS-BASED MODELING OF DAMAGE EVOLUTION IN VISCOELASTIC COMPOSITES

Damage in composite laminates affects their overall viscoelastic response. Previous research has been focused on developing constitutive equations for these materials considering a fixed state of damage. A complete description, however, requires suitable damage evolution laws. This paper is focused on studying damage evolution in viscoelastic laminates using a computational micromechanics approach. We use cohesive finite elements to study nucleation and subsequent growth of a transverse crack between two existing cracks in the 90° layer of a linear viscoelastic cross-ply laminate. The effect of loading rate, thickness of 90° ply and initial crack density on the evolution of a new crack is investigated.