LAUSR

Abstract The paper describes the fracture toughness of biomimetic architected carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates via experimental and numerical methods. High-fidelity Finite Element (FE) models in conjunction with modified Mises criteria have been developed to evaluate the effect of the interlaminar architectures on the fracture toughness of bio-inspired helicoidal composites. A bi-linear cohesive zone model (CZM) with Hashin damage criterion has been used here to simulate the interlaminar and intralaminar damage behaviors during quasi-static three-point bending (3 PB) tests of biomimetic architected CFRP laminates, and 3 PB test results extracted from open literature and obtained in this work have been used to validate the load-displacement response of the specimens predicted from the proposed FE model. Mode I and mode II interlaminar fracture toughness of these layered composites have also been identified as semi-analytical functions of the stacking angle of two adjacent layers, and the predictions show a good agreement with the corresponding experimental data. This work provides guidelines about the use of the bionic design CFRP composite in applications where toughness is critical.