Damage and strength analysis of open-hole laminated plates under tensile, compressive and bending loadings

The present paper deals with an experimental study on the damage and failure mechanisms encountered in laminated open-hole plates subjected bending loading. An original experimental device has been proposed and consists in applying compression with pivots, as an alternative to four-point bending tests. Its main advantage is that there is no contact between cylindrical bars and the sample and thus no local indentation. Moreover, the tests have been multi-instrumented with stereo-digital images correlation, acoustic emission, strain gauges and LVDT sensor to establish the damage and failure scenarios under bending loading. The influence of the hole diameter and of the total thickness on the failure load have been experimentally studied. The present experimental configurations are interesting test cases for advanced modelling because two stress gradients are generated in the sample, one through-the-thickness due to the bending and another one in-the-plane due to the geometrical singularities.