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

ABSTRACT 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.