Numerical study of static and dynamic fracture behaviours of neat epoxy resin

In the present study, a numerical model was built using LS-DYNA (R) to investigate the static and dynamic fracture behaviours of neat epoxy. Fracture and Izod tests were conducted experimentally for validation. The applicability of different numerical methods, i.e., finite element method and meshfree methods (element-free Galerkin, and smoothed particle Galerkin), was investigated considering different loading conditions (static and dynamic). When compared with the experimental data, the meshfree methods were found to replicate the dynamic fracture behaviour more precisely, while all the methods provided comparable results under static loading conditions. Besides, to foster the development of more accurate numerical methods focussed on the fracture mechanism in epoxy resin, the effects of pre-crack length and strain rate on modelling were investigated by exploiting the results from the fracture tests and Izod tests, respectively. The results showed that the pre-crack length had a strong influence on the fracture toughness obtained, while incorporating the strain rate effect in a material model noticeably influenced the damage caused by the impactor and the final value of energy absorbed.