Capability analysis of Puck damage model in predicting the damage behavior of unidirectional composite laminates under different scenarios

Abstract

Composite materials have been broadly used in many engineering fields because of their distinctive properties. They have advantages over metals as their properties offer significant advantages such as very good strength to weight ratio. However, failure in composite structures due to interlaminar and intralaminar raises a maintenance concern because it can lead to invisible damage. Therefore, this paper presents the capability of three-dimensional Puck failure criteria with gradual degradation rule to predict the structural responses, as well as the onset and propagation of failure due to variation of the situation in a composite laminate. The proposed damage model is achieved via the implementation of user-subroutines both in statics and explicit analysis using Abaqus software. Three different scenarios are investigated which were open-hole tension, low-velocity impact, and multi-bolt double-lap joint. The force-displacement and force-time curves are recorded and compared with experimental data taken from literature to measure the performance of such damage model. It is found out that the model adopted here responses well with test curves and demonstrates the high capability of predicting the damage in the direction of in-plane and out-of-plane in a composite laminate.