Dynamic fiber debonding and push-out in model composites

When a crack propagates in a fiber-reinforced composite material, a substantial part of energy is dissipated in the debonding and sliding of the bridging fibers located behind the advancing crack front. Because of the important effect they have on the fracture toughness of a composite, these processes have been the subject of extensive experimental, analytical and numerical work. However, the vast majority of existing work on this topic has been limited to quasi-static loading situations. The few investigations performed on various composite systems involving higher loading rates seem to indicate that the fiber sliding process presents some unusual and sometimes contradictory rate-dependent characteristics. To enhance the current understanding of dynamic fiber debonding and push-out in model fiber-reinforced composites, a combined experimental and numerical investigation was carried out.; A modified split Hopkinson pressure bar was used to perform high-rate fiber push-out experiments on an aluminum/epoxy model composite system. An axisymmetric cohesive/volumetric finite element scheme was developed to simulate the push-out process. Effects of several important parameters such as interfacial strength, interfacial fracture toughness and fiber/matrix friction coefficient were investigated. Interface cohesive properties were extracted by comparison between experimental and numerical results. The comparison between numerics and experiments was made as close as possible by (a) simulating the entire experimental apparatus; (b) using loading directly measured in the experiments as input to the finite element analysis (FEA) code; (c) using measured material properties in the FEA simulations; and (d) accounting for effects such as large deformations, residual stresses (through a quasi-static pre-loading scheme), spontaneous crack formation (through a cohesive failure formulation) and dynamic frictional sliding. Details of the physical process were discussed by numerically investigating the propagation and evolution of the axial stress along the entire system.; As an outcome of the numerical analysis, two major modifications were made to the experimental set-up: (a) stress information near the composite specimen was collected by a combination of quartz crystal transducer-strain gage measurement; (b) the crack initiation and propagation was explored by a custom crack detection system. Experimental observations further confirmed the numerical analysis results.