A novel local to global (L2G) method for progressive fracture analysis of composite laminates

In this paper, we extend a recently developed local to global (L2G) method to capture complex progressive damage processes in composite laminates, which include intra-ply matrix/fiber failure and inter-ply delamination. The L2G builds and solves local problems for individual and interactive cracks, whose local solutions are returned as part of the trial solution for global iteration. It has been demonstrated that the proposed method has advantages of good-accuracy, high-efficiency, and robustness. It can deal with complex problem of cracks branching/merging and multiple interactive cracks. This paper uses the L2G to handle different intra-ply failure modes by adopting Hashin’s criterion, and cohesive zone model (CZM) element is used to capture delamination in inter-plies. Numerical examples of several different stacking open-hole composite laminates show that the proposed L2G is capable of modeling failure processes from minor matrix cracks initiation to final fiber rupture.