Microcrack formation and delamination growth are the main damage mechanisms in the fatigue of composites. They lead to significant stiffness loss, introduce stress concentrations and can be the origin of subsequent damage events like buckling or fibre breakage, especially in case of shear and compression stresses during load reversal. Fatigue experiments of carbon fibre reinforced laminates were conducted at several stress ratios and analysed in terms of crack and delamination growth. These investigations were accompanied by microscopic imaging, digital image correlation and finite element modelling to take into account the effects of residual stresses and crack closure. It was found that residual stresses significantly change the local stress ratio in off-axis layers and lead to residual crack opening of inter fibre cracks. These cracks remain open and close under high compression loadings only. Furthermore, crack formation under pulsating compression loading turned out to be driven by residual stresses leading to perpendicular cracks as observed under pure tension loading. The experimental findings further confirm the severe detrimental effect of tension-compression loading on crack formation and delamination growth compared to pulsating tension-tension or compression-compression loads.

Static and fatigue analyses are presented for a new blended wing body (BWB) fuselage concept considering laminar flow control (LFC) by boundary layer suction in order to reduce the aerodynamic drag. BWB aircraft design concepts profit from a structurally beneficial distribution of lift and weight and allow a better utilization of interior space over conventional layouts. A structurally efficient design concept for the pressurized BWB cabin is a vaulted layout that is, however, aerodynamically disadvantageous. A suitable remedy is a multi-shell design concept with a separate outer skin. The synergetic combination of such a multi-shell BWB fuselage with a LFC via perforation of the outer skin to attain a drag reduction appears promising. In this work, two relevant structural design aspects are considered. First, a numerical model for a ribbed double-shell design of a fuselage segment is analyzed. Second, fatigue aspects of the perforation in the outer skin are investigated. A design making use of controlled fiber orientation is proposed for the perforated skin. The fatigue behavior is compared to perforation methods with conventional fiber topologies and to configurations without perforations.

Understanding the composite damage formation process and its impact on mechanical properties is a key step towards further improvement of material and higher use. For its accelerated application, furthermore, practice-related modeling strategies are to be established. In this collaborative study, the damage behavior of carbon fiber-reinforced composites under cyclic loading with load reversals is analyzed experimentally and numerically. The differences of crack density evolution during constant amplitude and tension-compression block-loading is characterized with the help of fatigue tests on cross-ply laminates. For clarifying the evolving stress-strain behavior of the matrix during static and fatigue long-term loading, creep, and fatigue experiments with subsequent fracture tests on neat resin samples are applied. The local stress redistribution in the composite material is later evaluated numerically using composite representative volume element (RVE) and matrix models under consideration of viscoelasticity. The experimental and numerical work reveals the strong influence of residual stresses and the range of cyclic tension stresses to the damage behavior. On the microscopic level, stress redistribution dependent on the mean stress takes place and a tendency of the matrix towards embrittlement was found. Therefore, it is mandatory to consider stress amplitude and means stress as inseparable load characteristic for fatigue assessment, which additionally is influenced by production-related and time-dependent residual stresses. The phenomenological findings are incorporated to a numerical simulation framework on the layer level to provide an improved engineering tool for designing composite structures.

The damage and fracture behavior of Fiber Reinforced Polymers (FRPs) is quite complex and is different than the failure behavior of the traditionally employed metals. There are various types of failure mechanisms that can develop during the service life of composite structures. Each of these mechanisms can initiate and propagate independently. However, in practice, they act synergistically and appear simultaneously. The difficulties that engineers face to understand and predict how these different failure mechanisms result in a structural failure enforce them to use high design safety factors and also increases the number of certification tests needed. Considering that the experimental investigations of composites can be limited, very expensive, and time-consuming, in this contribution the newly developed multi Phase-Field (PF) fracture model [1] is employed to numerically study the failure in different Unidirectional Fiber Reinforced Polymers (UFRPs) laminates, namely, fracture in single-edge notched laminated specimens, matrix cracking in cross-ply laminates, and delamination migration in multi-layered UFRPs. The formulation of the PF model incorporates two independent PF variables and length scales to differentiate between fiber and inter-fiber (matrix-dominated) failure mechanisms. The physically motivated failure criterion of Puck is integrated into the model to control the activation and evolution of the PF parameters. The corresponding governing equations in terms of variational formulation is implemented into the Finite Element (FE) code ABAQUS utilizing the user-defined subroutines UMAT and UEL.