Post-buckling progressive damage of CFRP laminates with a large-sized elliptical cutout subjected to shear loading

Cutouts are always located in aerospace composite structures to meet specified requirements on the service and functions. The presence of cutout, especially large-sized cutout, would result in a significant stress concentration, and consequently a complicated failure mechanism. This paper presents an experimental and numerical study on the post-buckling damage process of high-performance carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP), T800/X850, multidirectional composite laminated specimen. The simply supported specimen is with a central large-sized elliptical cutout and subjected to shearing load. In the numerical analysis, a damage model incorporating both advanced strain softening schemes and cross-coupling effect between the failure mechanisms is constructed for the damage simulation. Regularizations are implemented for coupling the damage variables to address the deficiencies of the existing model and access the real physical damage behavior of laminated composites. The strain invariant failure theory is employed for evaluation of delamination. To assess the objectivity of the present numerical model, the numerical predictions are compared with experimental data. The predicted damage and propagation patterns show good agreement with experiment results.