Peridynamics for out-of-plane damage analysis of composite laminates

A new peridynamic model for predicting the out-of-plane bending and twisting behavior of composite laminates has been proposed, in which fiber bonds and matrix bonds are distinguished for characterizing anisotropy. The peridynamic formulations are obtained based on the principle of virtual displacements using the Total Lagrange formulation, and the equation of motion is reformulated by the interpolation technique. The critical curvature is adopted as the failure criterion, and a micromodulus reduction method is implemented in the PD algorithm. For multi-layer laminated structures, a new single-layer material point model (SLMPM) is proposed, in which the overall micromodulus is integrated according to all plies in laminates. The capability of the developed PD model was demonstrated by the bending examples of composite laminates with different fiber orientations, and damage analysis was further conducted to demonstrate the strong capability of the proposed PD model in replicating the failure process of composite structures. In addition, the computational efficiency of numerical models can be greatly improved due to the SLMPM.