A Peridynamic Cohesive Zone Model for Composite Laminates

Delamination growth of composite laminates is one of the research focuses for composite structure design. This paper proposes a peridynamic (PD) cohesive zone model (CZM) for composite laminates. It describes the softening process of bond force and the behavior of delamination growth through interlaminar bonds. Based on bilinear cohesive law and Benzeggagh-Kenane (B-K) criterion, PD modeling of delamination growth under mixed-mode loading is established. The delamination damage is defined by the failure status variables of interlaminar bonds. Penalty function method is used to impose multi-point constraints (MPC) for simulating rigid lever in mixed-mode bending (MMB) test. The validity and feasibility of the proposed approach are verified by comparison with experimental results of double cantilever beam (DCB) and MMB tests.