Development of a Fatigue Damage Propagation Model for Fibre Metal Laminates with Locally Tailored Fibre Layers

The goal of this project was to develop, implement, validate, and verify a simple analytical model for crack propagation within an FML with non-uniform stiffness, with principal focus on GLARE. The motivation for this research lies in expanding existing research on local substitution of glass/epoxy fibre with stiffer carbon/epoxy material. It was found that this local stiffness modification can act as a crack arresting feature - as such, characterization of the exact behaviour would be quite useful in future applications. The model presented in this thesis was implemented in the MATLAB™ environment and is based on previous analytical work by Alderliesten. Experimental validation and verification of the model showed good correlation between measured and predicted strains in the fibre and metal layers, good correlation between measured and predicted fatigue crack growth rates, and accurate prediction of the delamination shape close to the crack tip.