A concise interface constitutive law for analysis of delamination and splitting in composite materials and its application to scaled notched tensile specimens

A concise constitutive law for cohesive interfaces is proposed in this paper. A new state variable is introduced to track the extent of damage accumulated at the interface. The constitutive equations not only account for mixed‐mode delamination propagation in composite materials, but also satisfactorily deal with mode ratio change during the debonding process. The interface model is implemented in the LS‐DYNA explicit finite element code. The model has been applied to scaled open hole tension tests on laminated composite material. Comparison between numerical results and experiments shows good correlation for failure modes and strengths for a range of different specimen sizes. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.