Delamination analysis of holed composite laminates using interface elements

In this paper interface element with de-cohesive constitutive law is used to predict the failure load of laminates containing a central hole in which delamination is the dominant failure mode of them. For this purpose, the initiation and propagation of inter- laminar crack are modeled using our in hose FEM code. It is shown that at a certain load step, the interface elements between the two layers of -45° and 0° fail abruptly. It is also shown that the predicted failure stresses of laminates with various thicknesses are in an acceptable agreement with the experimental results.