Effects of loading rate on crack growth behavior in carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites using digital image correlation technique

The aim of this work is to investigate the effect of the loading rate on the crack growth behavior in carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites, under mode I monotonic tensile loading. For such objective, inter-laminar fracture toughness tests were performed on double cantilever beam (DCB) specimens, according to the ASTM-D5528 standard. The initial crack tip opening displacement (CTOD) was obtained by employing the digital image correlation...