Numerical modelling of the damage modes in UD thin carbon/glass hybrid laminates

This paper proposes a new FE-based approach for modelling all of the possible damage modes in glass/ carbon UD hybrid laminates in tensile loading. The damage development is modelled by two sets of cohesive elements, (i) periodically embedded in the carbon layer for modelling carbon fibre failure and (ii) at the glass/carbon interface to capture delamination. The analysis is stopped when the glass layer failure is predicted by integrating the stress distribution over the glass layer to calculate an equivalent stress for unit volume of the glass. The proposed method is validated against the experimental results and then used to simulate the progressive damage process of other hybrid configurations and finally produce a damage-mode map for this material set. The method can easily be applied to other hybrids to assess their performance by producing damage-mode maps. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.