Selective activation of intrinsic cohesive elements for fracture analysis of laminated composites

Abstract In this paper, we studied the selective activation of intrinsic cohesive elements by using controllable multi-point constraints (MPCs) for fracture analyses of laminated composites. Cohesive elements inserted between bulk elements were deactivated by tying the cohesive nodes using MPC, which were selectively activated during analysis only for the failure region by releasing the constraints. A strategy for the systematic definition and release of MPCs that considers the composite failure modes was developed. When applied to the fracture analysis of laminated composites, the selective activation strategy was found to alleviate the artificial compliance problem of intrinsic cohesive elements while producing results that matched accurately those of conventional intrinsic cohesive elements.