Designing Composites for Graceful Failure

When inevitable, failure in composite laminates is preferred to occur gracefully to avoid loss of property and possibly life. While the inherent inhomogeneity leads to slow dissipation of damage-related energy, overall failure is fiber-dominated and occurs in a rather brittle manner. Multidirectional plies usually give a more ductile response. Additionally, stiffness and strength as well as cost are important factors to consider in designing composite laminates. It is hence desirable to optimize for high mechanical properties and low cost while keeping graceful failure. Designing composite laminates with hybrid systems and layups, which permit gradual damage energy dissipation, are two ways proposed in this work to optimize for mechanical properties while avoiding catastrophic failure. In the hybrid system design, combining the less expensive glass reinforced plies with carbon reinforced plies offers a cost-effective product, marginal mechanical properties change and ductile profile upon failure. Hybrid glass/carbon composite laminates subjected to three-point bending showed strain to failure which is double that measured for carbon composite specimens, without affecting the ultimate load. Energy dissipation mechanisms were also created by building laminates which were intentionally made discontinuous by introducing cuts in the fibers of the interior plies. This created a longer path for damage before cutting through the next ply resulting in double failure strain with marginal reduction in load. The effect of fiber discontinuity in terms of spacing and distribution are among the factors considered.