Damage analysis in glass fibre reinforced epoxy resin via digital image correlation

Abstract

The objective of the presented experimental study was to perform monotonic tensile tests and observe the damage occurring on the surface of a glass fibre mat reinforced epoxy resin. The experiments were performed on dogbone specimens machined from a 5.8 mm thick composite plate. The macroscopic response was obtained from the load data and 2D digital image correlation. The finite element-based Digital Image Correlation was employed to measure displacement fields and calculate strain fields across the entire region of interest. In addition, the grey level residuals extracted from the correlation analyses were utilized to detect discontinuities (i.e. damage initiation and growth) on the surface of the investigated specimens.