Characterization of progressive damage behaviour and failure mechanism of carbon fibre reinforced DP590 laminates

Abstract The progressive damage behaviour and failure mechanism of high-strength metal(HSS)/carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates under tensile and three-point bending loadings are investigated in this paper. Experiments and numerical simulations are used to study the hybrid composite laminates’ mechanical properties and failure mechanisms. The tensile failure mode of the DP590/CFRP laminate was a typical mixed failure mode. The metal layer presented the necking and fracture modes, and CFRP layer showed neat fibre fractures, resin matrix sections and fibre​ pull-out phenomena. The bending test demonstrated that the failure modes of DP590/CFRP composite laminates under the three-point bending loading were mainly included matrix failure, fibre fracture failure, and internal delamination. The typical bilinear behaviour was observed on the load–deflection curve of the DP590/CFRP composite laminate under the three-point bending loading. The established FEA-VUMAT model can accurately predict tensile, bending responses and failure mechanisms.