FEA based study of effect of characteristic element length on the damaged response of a composite

In this paper, a finite element analysis based study of the effect of characteristic element length on the damaged response of a composite is performed taking into consideration the damage evolution concept and how it is implemented in the FEA tool ABAQUS. Various options available to define the damaged response of a material such as fracture energy and characteristic element length are studied using benchmark problems. In the study, only shell elements are considered which can also be extended to other element types with different degrees of freedom.