Fracture, Interlaminar

Abstract

This chapter is mainly dedicated to describe the most prominent tests for interlaminar fracture characterization of composites under pure (I, II and III) and mixed-mode (I+II, I+III, II+III) loading. Experimental details and difficulties inherent to each test are presented and discussed. Additionally, the drawbacks of using classical data reduction schemes due to phenomena related to fracture propagation with non negligible fracture process zones are emphasized. As a consequence, an alternative data reduction scheme based on crack equivalent concept and specimen compliance is proposed to overcome the referred difficulties. Some results highlighting the advantages of the proposed methodology are presented for several of the presented tests.