Simulation Methods for High-Cycle Fatigue-Driven Delamination using Cohesive Zone Models - Fundamental Behavior and Benchmark Studies

A novel computational method for simulating fatigue-driven delamination cracks in composite laminated structures under cyclic loading based on a cohesive zone model [2] and new benchmark studies with four other comparable methods [3-6] are presented. The benchmark studies describe and compare the traction-separation response in the cohesive zone and the transition phase from quasistatic to fatigue loading for each method. Furthermore, the accuracy of the predicted crack growth rate is studied and compared for each method. It is shown that the method described in [2] is significantly more accurate than the other methods [3-6]. Finally, studies are presented of the dependency and sensitivity to the change in different quasi-static material parameters and model specific fitting parameters. It is shown that all the methods except [2] rely on different parameters which are not possible to determine experimentally and/or depend on the problem and are therefore not possible to determine in advance which is needed in order to do predictive simulation studies.