Engineering Commons^™

Heterogeneous Fracture Mechanics Representations Of The Effects Of Defects From Manufacturing To End Of Life, Vamsee Vadlamudi, Kenneth Reifsnider, Rassel Raihan, Fazle Rabbi

Institute of Predictive Performance Methodologies (IPPM-UTARI)

Composite materials are essential for many modern applications, including airplanes and cars, energy conversion and storage devices, medical prosthetics, and civil structures. The strength and life of such materials are determined by a complex sequence of progressive nucleation, accumulation, and coalescence of micro-damage that is always related to the micro-morphology of the constituents and their properties. Although detecting and modeling all of the discrete events in that sequence is quite difficult, and in some cases not feasible, it would be very useful to identify observable parameters that indicate the onset of different stages of damage development so that remaining strength …