Consideration of concurrent transverse cracking and induced delamination propagation using a generalized micro-meso approach and experimental validation

The aim of this study is to investigate the applicability and more verification of recently developed new micro-meso approach by the authors. Defining the damage evolution law in traditional classic mesomechanics approaches needs multifarious standard and non-standard lay-up tests. By combining the micromechanics and mesomechanics approaches, a relatively new micro-meso model is proposed to overcome the major disadvantage of traditional meso-scale modelling. In this study, standard tests are firstly performed to obtain the stress-strain behaviour of various laminates and then the effects of transverse cracking and induced delamination on laminates responses are examined under uniaxial loading. Furthermore, the recently developed new micro-meso approach is employed to predict the damage growth and stress-strain response of examined composite specimens in the experimental study. The experimental results are used to verify this micro-meso approach and discuss the differences. It is shown that the predicted stress-strain behaviours using the developed method are in good agreement with the experimental results for various laminates with different lay-up configurations.