RT journal article
T1 Calibration of a cohesive model for fracture in low cross-linked epoxy resins
A1 Torres, Dery
A1 Guo, Shu
A1 Villar Castro, María del Pilar
A1 Araújo Gay, Daniel
A1 Estevez, Rafael
A2 Ciencia de los Materiales e Ingeniería Metalúrgica y Química Inorgánica
K1 Crazing
K1 Cohesive zone
K1 Epoxy RTM
K1 elastic-viscoplastic crack tip fields
AB Polymer-based composites are becoming widely used for structural applications, in particular in the aeronautic industry. The present investigation focuses on the mechanical integrity of an epoxy resin of which possible damage results in limitation or early stages of dramatic failure. Therefore, a coupled experimental and numerical investigation of failure in an epoxy resin thermoset is carried out that opens the route to an overall micromechanical analysis of thermoset-based composites. In the present case, failure is preceded by noticeable plasticity in the form of shear bands similar to observations in ductile glassy polymers. Thus, an elastic-visco-plastic constitutive law initially devoted to glassy polymer is adopted that captures the rate- dependent yield stress followed by softening and progressive hardening at continued deformation. A general rate-dependent cohesive model is used to describe the failure process. The parameters involved in the description are carefully identified and used in a finite element calculation to predict the material’s toughness for different configurations. Furthermore, the present work allows investigation of nucleation and crack growth in such resins. In particular, a minimum toughness can be derived from the model which is difficult to evaluate experimentally and allows accounting for the notch effect on the onset of failure. This is thought to help in designing polymer-based composites.
YR 2018
FD 2018
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/31083
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/31083
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 12-nov-2026