Specimen thickness dependence of large scale fiber bridging in mode I interlaminar fracture of carbon epoxy composite

Large scale bridging is an important toughening mechanism in composite laminates that depends on the specimen geometry as well as the constituent materials. In this work, an iterative approach is applied to identify the effect of specimen thickness on traction–separation behavior in the bridging zone. Double cantilever beam specimens (DCB) with embedded arrays of wavelength-multiplexed fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors are subjected to monotonic...