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C. Pagès Miró:
"Quasi-Static Simulation of Laminated Structures with Explicit Finite Element Methods";
Supervisor: H. E. Pettermann; Institut für Leichtbau und Struktur-Biomechanik, TU Wien; UPC Terrassa, 2013.

The use of artificial composite materials such as Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) laminates has become popular through a wide variety of applications requiring high specific strength and stiffness during the past years. FRP laminates have a complex failure behavior, which includes two main failure modes to take under consideration: failure inside the ply and failure in the interface between plies (delamination).
This project studies the mechanical behavior of a FRP laminated structure by an explicit dynamics Finite Elements Method (FEM) applied to a quasi-static problem using ABAQUS 6.12. A long-fiber reinforced specimen with 0°/90° orientation of the fibers is placed under a Three Point Bending situation in order to obtain information about the ply damage and delamination of the structure. Three-dimensional models with different mesh refinements are analyzed and compared to results obtained in a previous thesis by different models and implicit dynamics analysis.
The ply damage is modeled by a VUMAT subroutine used in conjunction with ABAQUS/Explicit and the delamination is modeled by surface-based cohesive behavior of the interface included in the ABAQUS package. The results prove the existence of a strong relationship between ply damage and delamination and similarity to the damage sequence in experimental tests results. A resemblance between the present simulations and previous results by implicit dynamics is found, although lower values of strength and stiffness are estimated in the present case.