Structural Integrity and Durability of Advanced Composites

7.5. Conclusions

In this chapter, damage-accumulation and degradation models based on a micromechanical–empirical approach have been proposed. Although many such models have been proposed by various authors to describe damage evolution in composite materials, they mostly focus on growth and degradation of microdefects during the middle and late stages of damage evolution in fiber-reinforced composite materials. The proposed model is framed by the early and middle stages of the damage evolution process that are also the central focus of this chapter. As such, the damage-accumulation and stiffness-degradation models contain both damage initiation and growth processes of microdefects in composite materials. Furthermore, the proposed models are robust ...