DAMAGE PROPAGATION IN COMPOSITE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS - COUPON EXPERIMENTS AND ANALYSES

An overview of experiments and analyses being performed at the coupon level within the GARTEUR (Group of Aeronautical Research in Europe) ac tion group AG16: 'Damage propagation in composite structural elements' is given. Both basic delamination fracture experiments such as DCB, E NF, MMB, CLS and SEN and coupon tests with embedded artificial delamin ations or impact damages are carried out. The experiments are analysed using different methods and energy release rate, stress-based failure criteria and damage models are evaluated. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science L td.