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Due to high strength and stiffness in comparison with their weights, laminated composite materials are widely used in many structures such as aerospace and naval structures. Therefore, the understanding of their failure mechanisms to predict their mechanical response is of high importance. One of the major aforementioned mechanisms is the delamination which commonly occurs in skin/stiffener joints. In the present paper, a comparative study on the delamination in composite skin/stringer structures under 3 point and 4 point bending loads is performed by the finite element method (FEM) employing the cohesive elements. The detailed effects of stacking sequence on the damage of structure are investigated. A user defined interface element has been implemented in the Ansys software in continuum damage mechanics framework based on the bilinear cohesive zone model. The advantage of this method is the modeling of delamination growth without any requirements to the presence of initial crack and remeshing. Comparison of the obtained results from FEM with that of experiment justifies the capability of the employed model to predict the delamination initiation and propagation. The results indicate that in the 3 point bending load, the damage initiates from the adhesive between skin and stringer, while in 4 point bending load it initiates from the interface elements between skin layers near the adhesive bond. Finally, in order to increase the strength of skin/stringer structures, the results strongly recommends preventing the use of 45 and 90 degrees plies near each other around the adhesive bond.

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Polymeric Due to high strength to weight ratio of polymeric composites and their directional properties, they are extensively used in engineering, particularly in aerospace industry. However, the difference in material properties of composites makes their failure prediction complicated especially under cyclic loading. Present study is carried out to develop a new method for estimation of the intralaminar fatigue damage of fibrous composites based on continuum damage mechanics. In order to include the influence of microscopic defects in three material orientations, three internal material state variables namely damage variables are defined in thermodynamics framework. By considering a 3-directional damage propagation, suggested model is able to make a good prediction of laminated composites fatigue life. To achieve this, a closed form solution by energy method in framework of thermodynamics is presented. The solution is in a way to include the differences in damages of various directions yet maintaining the independency on the layup. The model is implemented in ANSYS software by using a user material code (Usermat). This method gives us an advantage to estimate the fatigue life of any laminate with arbitrary layup under different loading conditions only by having static and fatigue properties of a unidirectional ply. Characterization of constants of model is presented and they are also determined for a certain composite material. Comparison between the predicted results of proposed model and the available experimental data verifies the great precision of the model.