Report on material calibration tests, open hole tension tests and filled hole tests

The project “A Study of Damage Initiation and Growth in Composite Bolted Joints” is funded under the Basic Research Grants Scheme 2002, jointly administered by Enterprise Ireland and the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology. It runs from October 2002 to September 2005. The goal of the project is to develop computational models for prediction of the initiation and growth of damage in composite bolted joints. Two approaches will be investigated. The first will be based on a stiffness reduction scheme. The second will be based on continuum damage mechanics. The two approaches will be compared against experimental data generated within the project and also from a previous EU research project, and critically assessed. This report (D3.2) presents the results of experimental test series 1, 2 and 3a. In addition, a brief literature review of previous work carried out on the subject of damage initiation and growth in fibre reinforced composite materials is included in the report. The literature review and the results from each test series are dealt with in their own separate chapters. The literature review is dealt with in Chapter 2. Previous work available in the open literature, which has relevance for the test series carried out so far as part of this study and which has relevance to future, proposed work is reviewed. Chapter 3 deals with the results obtained from Test Series 1, material characterisation tests of both material systems investigated in this study, viz. Hexcel Materials Ltd. 6376C-HTA(12K)-5.5-29.5% carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) and Cytec Engineered Materials Ltd. FM94-27%-S2-187-460 glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP). Chapter 4 deals with the preliminary results of Test Series 3a, Ladevèze model parameter tests for the CFRP material only. Chapter 5 deals with the results of Test Series 2, open hole and filled hole tension tests, as with Test Series 1, two material systems were investigated in this test series. Finally, Chapter 6 presents the conclusions of the work carried out so far and proposes future work to be considered for the project.