Issue 73

J. M. Parente, et alii, Fracture and Structural Integrity, 73 (2025) 139-152; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.73.10

Numerical predictions Figs. 5 and 6 show that all numerical values fell within the standard deviation range of the experimental results, demonstrating a good degree of correlation between the two sets of data.

400

Experimental Force [N] Numerical Force [N]

14

12

300

10

8

200

6

Displ. [mm]

Force [N]

4

100

2

0

0

8C 1G/7C 7C/1G 2G/6C 6C/2G 3G/5C 5C/3G 8G

Configuration

Figure 5: Comparison between experimental and numerical results for maximum force and corresponding displacement. Particularly, as shown in Fig. 5, the numerical predictions are slightly higher than the experimental values, with errors of 3.1% for 8C, 5.3% for 1G/7C, 15.9% for 7C/1G, 11% for 6C/2G, 1.7% for 3G/5C, 1.7% for 5C/3G, and -0.5% for 8G. The results for the maximum displacement indicate that the presence of more than one layer of glass fibre on the bottom of the laminate (7C/1G, 6C/2G and 5C/3G), results in an overestimation of the numerical predictions with errors of 8.7% for 7C/1G, 0.6% for 6C/2G, and 0% for 5C/3G. On the other hand, for the remaining configurations, the maximum displacement obtained numerically was lower than that obtained experimentally. Specifically, the numerical results presented errors of -6.6% for 8C, -3.67% for 1G/7C, -6.8% for 2G/6C, -17.5% for 3G/5C, and -4.7% for 8G. Analysing the force-displacement curves represented in Fig. 6a and 6b, it is possible to notice that numerical and experimental results have a similar behaviour throughout the 3PB test and that they present a satisfactory agreement for all tested configurations.

400

Num. 1G/7C

Num. 2G/6C

Num. 3G5C Exp. 3G/5C

Num. 8G Ex.p 2G6C

Exp. 8G

Exp. 1G7C

300

200

Force [N]

100

a)

0

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Displacement [mm]

144