Progressive damage analysis of composite cruciform specimen under biaxial loading

With the increasing use of composite materials in various industries, the need for understanding their behavior under different loading conditions, especially biaxial loading, is essential. Shape of biaxial test specimen should be designed to create pure biaxial loading at the center of specimen because it has significant effect on the damage behavior. In this study, three different shapes of laminated cruciform specimens under biaxial loading are modeled in the commercial finite element software, ABAQUS, and the best geometry of cruciform specimen is selected. Damage initiation is first investigated by Tsai-Wu, Tsai-Hill and Hashin failure criteria for carbon/epoxy (IM7/8552)laminate with stacking sequence of [(±45/0)4/±45]. Then, progressive damage analysis is performed based on the Hashin failure criterion. Numerical results are compared with experimental ones available in the literature