Experimental and numerical investigations on the punching failure of carbon fiber-reinforced plastics

Abstract This publication describes novel experimental and numerical investigations on the punching failure of carbon fiber-reinforced plastics. This kind of failure is relevant in joining processes as well as a characteristic failure type of mechanical fasteners between metals and carbon fiber-reinforced plastics like rivets or screws. So far, there is a lack of a precise phenomenological description of this failure mode. For this reason, this paper focuses on the experimental analysis of the damage and failure mechanism. As a result, the experiments show a failure evolution without any shearing of the fibers. This provides the basis for the accompanying simulation using the finite element method. Subsequently, the simulation of the experiments demonstrates that a modeling of a punching failure is possible by a combination of known fiber, inter-fiber and delamination failure criteria without extensions.