Structural defects such as resin pocket area are inevitably created between surface and core of composite structures during the production of wind turbine blades using vacuum infusion process. In this article, four-point bending tests were performed on tapered sandwich composites to investigate the effect of resin pocket area on the mechanical strength, crack growth path, and failure mode. Specimens were in similar shape to wind turbine blade profiles, and a shear-dominant load was applied to the resin pocket area during the experiments. The extended finite-element method was applied in order to predict crack growth path and failure mode. The average static strength of the specimens including the small size of resin pocket area had almost no change in compare with the specimen with no resin pocket area. Moreover, the medium size of resin pocket area decreased the strength for 3.5% while the large size one enhanced it for 1.75%. Thus, it can be deduced that the defect area does not have a significant effect on the flexural strength of the sandwich composite tapered specimens, but it can arrest the crack. Therefore, the crack propagates in the opposite direction at the interface of the face and core. Although the resin pocket area arrests the crack, it was observed that the size of resin pocket area directly affects the crack growth and its path. The smaller resin pocket area leads to slower crack growth, and early collapse occurs for the larger size of defect area. So, the size of resin pocket area has considerable importance during manufacturing of such structures. Finally, numerical results have shown good agreement with experimental ones.
Finite element prediction of resin pocket geometry around embedded optical fiber sensors in prepreg composites
