Progressive damage behaviour of RTM-made composite T-joint under tensile loading

The paper deals with mechanical behaviour of the RTM (resin transfer moulding)-made composite T-joints under tensile loading. Initial failure and damage evolution behaviors as well as the load-displacement curves were determined by experiments. Progressive damage models (PDMs) of composite T-joint were presented based on the Hashin, Chang-Chang, Hou criteria and the mixed criterion, and the results predicted from the aforementioned PDMs were compared with experimental data, demonstrating the better correlation with the experiments for the predictions from the mixed criterion than from other criteria. The reason for this is that the interlaminar delamination failure can be identified and isolated by the mixed criterion. Using the PDM based on mixed criterion, the predicted initial and final failure loads have a good agreement with experiments, and the effects of triangular fillers and radius of boundary angle were investigated and discussed on initial failure loads of composite T-joint. The findings in this work are helpful to improve mechanical behaviour of composite T-joint.