Parametric study of failure mechanisms and optimal configurations of pseudo-ductile thin-ply UD hybrid composites

The effect of different parameters on the gradual failure and pseudo-ductility of thin UD hybrids is studied using an analytical method developed recently. Damage mode maps are proposed to show the effect of different geometric parameters for a specific material combination. This type of map is a novel and efficient method to find the optimum configuration of UD hybrids and also indicates the importance of thin layers to achieve the optimum geometric parameters in practice. The material parametric study reveals that there is always a trade-off between the "yield stress" and the amount of pseudo-ductility; higher yield stresses leads to lower pseudo-ductility and vice versa. However, application of high-stiffness fibres with high strengths as the low strain material can provide both better pseudo-ductility and yield stress.