A physically based continuum damage mechanics model for thin laminated composite structures

The present work focuses on the development, implementation, and verification of a plane-stress continuum damage mechanics (CDM) based model for composite materials. A physical treatment of damage growth based on the extensive body of experimental literature on the subject is combined with the mathematical rigour of a CDM description to form the foundation of the model. The model has been implemented in the commercial finite element code, LS-DYNA and the results of the application of the model to the prediction of impact damage growth and its effects on the impact force histories in carbon fibre reinforced plastic laminates are shown to be physically meaningful and accurate. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the material characterization parameters can be extracted from the results of standard test methodologies for which a large body of published data already exists for many composite materials.