Out-of-plane tensile failure behavior of fiber reinforced composites due to lay-up temperature induced intra-ply and inter-ply voids

The focus of this paper is to understand the effect of voids on the damage mechanism of the composite under outof-plane tensile load with different lay-up temperature conditions. A micro-scale model for ply-by-ply structure is established containing intralaminar and interlaminar domain in which voids are generated by a random irregular voids generation algorithm to explore the role of voids (intra-ply voids and inter-ply voids) on the transverse damage behavior of the composite. Then, a macro-scale model containing elements with and without void is established to capture crack propagation behavior in the specimen. Analysis of voids in variation layup temperatures are conducted experimentally and numerically. The results show that with the increasing lay-up temperature, the porosity increases from 1% to 4.5%, and the void distribution changes from the intra-ply voids dominant to the inter-ply voids dominant, while the out-of-plane tensile strength decreases by about 30%.

Automated summary

This study investigates the effect of voids on the damage mechanism of composite materials under out-of-plane tensile load with different lay-up temperature conditions. By establishing micro and macro models, experimental and numerical analyses show that increasing lay-up temperature leads to changes in the types and distribution of voids, resulting in a decrease in the out-of-plane tensile strength of the composite.