Development of Computer Program for Fracture Simulation of Composite Structures

Abstract

A personal computer program by Finite Element Method (FEM) has been developed in order to analyze the fracture mechanism of composite materials with nonlinear properties. The mechanical behavior of a structure with local failures or damages may be shown by a decrease in Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio of the broken elements in FEM. Therefore, Young's modules and Poisson's ratio for fracture elements were assumed to be 0.01(MPa) and 0.0, respectively. As the examples, the mechanical behaviors of a hybrid composite and an angle-ply laminate under tensile load and of a concrete beam with FRP sheet under bending load were analyzed by the developed computer program. The diagrams showing the relation between the applied load and the displacement up to failure were obtained. These results have revealed that the developed program is very useful for the fracture simulation of structures made of composites.