ME679A: Damage Mechanics Of Composite Materials

Fibre reinforced polymeric composites are gradually replacing traditional metal alloys in making primary load carrying structures in aerospace and automobile sector. This is due to their superior structural and functional properties. However, failure of composites under mechanical loading are far more complex than metals. This course would start by highlighting the importance of carrying out failure analysis in composite structures. Next, it would discuss the different failure mechanisms experimentally observed, and introduce several physically based advanced failure theories developed for composites. This course would also cover computational implementation of different failure models as user defined subroutines in a commercial finite element programme.