Hadi Bakhshan - Iran University of Science and Technology;
Zahed Vakili - Iran University of Science and Technology
Javad Marzbanrad - Iran University of Science and Technology

The analysis of notched composite parts in structures due to the existence of high stress concentration and undetermined behavior is an exigent issue. In this research, the progressive failure analysis has been applied to predict the failure of notched woven glass/epoxy composite laminates under tensile loading. Stress analysis and investigation of the hole-size effect on notched composites have been performed by the experimental and numerical methods. Developing a user-defined material model (UMAT) in the Abaqus finite element package has made the utilization of the 3D progressive failure analysis feasible. Max. Stress, Yamada- Sun and Tsai- Wu failure criteria have been implemented in Abaqus to predict the damageinitiation due to the absence of significant failure criterion for woven composites. Instantaneous and recursive property degradation methods have been employed to simulate damage propagation. The tensile characteristic length has been computed without performing experiments. Numerical results in terms of strength and characteristic length showed good agreement with experimental data. More than above, it was verified by experiment that characteristic length obtained by progressive damage analysis is a reliable and simple method to design notched woven laminates

Notched woven composites, progressive damage, UMAT, characteristic length