PARAMETRIC STUDY ON FRACTURE ANGLE SEARCH ALGORITHM FOR PUCK’S 3D MATRIX FAILURE CRITERION

Resumo

The Puck’s failure criteria is one of the most successful models for assessing the onset of
damage in unidirectional (UD) laminate composites. However the original algorithm proposed for matrix
fracture plane angle search is based on brute-force approach where all the angles between −90o
to 90o
, in

increments of 1

o ought to be evaluated. This work presents an enhanced method to expedite the detection
of inter-fiber fracture (IFF) angle in UD laminate composites. A series of numerical optimisations and
enhancements were made to reduce the computational cost of the fracture angle search.