An anisotropic phase field model for fiber-reinforced composite laminates based on a combined failure criterion

An anisotropic phase field model (PFM) naturally embedded a combined failure criterion is proposed for the progressive failure analysis of composite laminates. To account for different failure mechanisms, a novel decomposition scheme for bulk deformation energy density is proposed and three specific energetic degradation functions are defined. Explicit time integration rules are adopted to solve the nonlinear coupled damage-mechanical governing equations. Numerical simulations of slit-like notched and circular open hole composite laminates subjected to in-plane tensile loading are performed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed anisotropic phase field model. It has been shown that the present model can effectively capture the crack propagation paths and predict the effective strengths of the notched laminates. In general, the predicted effective strengths are more accurate than those reported in the literature, and the predicted differences with respect to the experimental data remain within 10%.