An approach for dealing with high local stresses in finite element analyses

Highly localised through-thickness stress concentrations, higher than the strength of the material, may occur when a linear elastic finite element analysis of a composite structure is performed. Such stresses may be caused by real geometrical or material discontinuities or by artefacts in the model. The objective of this paper is to present a validated approach to determine when these high stresses will not lead to failure by delamination or matrix cracking and can therefore be ignored. Named as the High Stress Concentration (HSC) method, the approach presented in this paper is found to provide good results when applied to several finite element analyses, and is also in agreement with experimental data.