Numerical analysis of delamination in through-thickness reinforced composite laminates

Composite laminates show a high vulnerability to out-of-plane actions, responsible for localized damage between two adjacent laminae, i.e. delamination phenomenon. A recent technological solution to improve the strength of the composite laminates in the thickness direction consists in inserting through-thickness reinforcement. In this paper, the composite delamination is analyzed in the context of non-linear fracture mechanics by an original two-phase interface model able to describe the anisotropic elastic and post-elastic mechanical response given by the presence of the reinforcement fibres. The two phases (adhesive joint or matrix of the composite and the reinforcement) are characterized by own constitutive laws and coupled at the equilibrium level. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed model two case-studies have been simulated.