Studies of mode I delamination in monotonic and fatigue loading using FBG wavelength multiplexing and numerical analysis

Bridging by intact fibers in composite materials is one of the most important toughening mechanisms. However, a direct experimental assessment of its contribution is not easy to achieve. In this work a semi-experimental method is proposed to quantify its contribution to fracture of unidirectional carbon fiber/epoxy double cantilever beam (DCB) specimens in mode I delamination under monotonic and 1 Hz fatigue loads. In each specimen, an embedded...