Effects of large scale bridging in load controlled fatigue delamination of unidirectional carbon-epoxy specimens

Fatigue delamination growth in composites is accompanied by large scale bridging (LSB) that yields important toughening effects. However, the extent of this mechanism depends on the laminate geometry rendering its modeling a challenging task. This work presents a combined experimental/numerical study on characterization of specimen thickness dependence of LSB in fatigue delamination. Double cantilever beam specimens of different thicknesses (h =...