Original Article

Experimental study on the effect of

interface fiber orientation and utilized
delamination initiation techniques on
fracture toughness of glass/epoxy
composite laminates

Journal of Reinforced Plastics

and Composites
2016, Vol. 35(23) 17221733
! The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/0731684416666402
jrp.sagepub.com

Masood Nikbakht1, Hossein Hosseini Toudeshky1

and Bijan Mohammadi2

Abstract
Critical energy release rate for delamination initiation in composites as a material property, supposed to be independent
from non-material variables. However, a thorough literature review presented in this study shows that in many cases it
may vary with the variation of layup configuration or geometrical and dimensions. This study is aimed to investigate the
effect of interface layers orientation on fracture toughness by eliminating the other influential parameters such as
stacking sequence, by selecting the anti-symmetric layup configuration of Double Cantilever Beam, =010 =  as , in
which  will be 0 , 30 , 45 and 60 . The energy release rates data have been calculated using different criteria and
techniques to obtain the load and displacement at initial crack growth and the results were compared with the standard
methods. The damage zone near the crack tip is also illustrated before and after the crack propagation by microscopic
images of delamination front, and discussed for all investigated interface fiber angles. Experimental results show that the
effect of interface layers orientation on fracture toughness of the investigated layup configurations based on the nonlinear
technique as a standard procedure is negligible while other techniques show a considerable changes in the calculated
energy release rate with the increase of interface layers angle from zero to 60 degrees.

Keywords
Multidirectional, composite, double cantilever beam, interface fibers angle, acoustic emission

Introduction
As the application of laminated composites increases in
various industries during years, investigations on the
newly activated failure mechanisms and material characterization in a new service or loading condition
become an important issue. The interchangeability of
the ber orientation and stacking sequence of plies in
composite laminates besides their exible manufacturing process makes them well-suited for dierent applications. However, any change in these parameters may
aect the failure mechanisms in each loading condition
and fracture toughness, and consequently, may change
the service life of the laminate.
Transverse cracking is greatly active in multidirectional (MD) laminates, but as delamination occurs

between layers of dierent ber orientation, causes

more severe reduction in laminate stiness and
strength. Hence, obtaining the critical energy release
rate (GIc) values of MD specimens is of great importance for development of fracture criteria.13

1
2

Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, IR Iran

Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, IR Iran

Corresponding author:
Hossein Hosseini Toudeshky, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran,
IR Iran.
Email: hosseini@aut.ac.ir

Nikbakht et al.
The applicability of the standard double cantilever
beam (DCB) specimen for delamination resistance
determination of multidirectional laminates has been
previously assessed.4 Intra-ply cracking and crack
jumping between neighbor interfaces are often observed
in the experimental investigations.5 Although, the
migration of delamination from the original defect
plane means that the test is no longer characterizing
the interface of interest. Thus, delamination resistance
from a DCB test on multidirectional laminates can
probably be quantied for initiation only.4
The previously performed investigations on characterizing of the GIc for MD laminates can be categorized
in terms of considered stacking sequence and interface.
Some studies were investigating the interface only while
the stacking sequence retained unchanged.520 There
are also studies in which the interface remains between
two unidirectional plies while the stacking sequence
changes by angle in a constant conguration,21 or in
the whole laminates.5,14,22 Finally, researches are available that studying both interface and stacking sequence
changes at the same time.4,6,8,2328 Some studies concluded that the measured GIc for initial crack growth
is practically independent of the ber orientations right
at surfaces of the interface,6,8,14,15,19,23,24 while the
others concluded that it reduces9,17,18,22,27 or even
may increase7,1012,16,21,23,25,26 when ber orientations
are changed. Also any change in stacking sequence
may increase21 or decrease22 the GIc value for initial
crack growth of MD laminates while other
researches5,14 reported that it may be independent of
stacking sequence.
In general, even though there are many researches
performed in this eld, a robust conclusion about the
inuence of bers orientations on fracture toughness of
MD laminates does not exist. Also, the capability to
eliminate or minimize other factors aecting the crack
growth resistance during the experimental tests would
be of great advantage. In such ideal condition, the
observed delamination behavior and changes of laminates can be directly related to the stacking sequence or
ply orientations at interface surfaces.
The focus of the present paper is to investigate the
eect of interface layers orientation on delamination
fracture toughness. The stacking sequences are selected
in a way that allows the assessment of the interface
layers orientation without considerable changes in the
whole elastic behavior of the specimens. The fracture
toughness is calculated using six dierent techniques
obtaining the load and displacement at initial crack
growth. Then the R-curves for specimens with dierent
interface layers orientations are analyzed. Finally, the
obtained values of GIc from various techniques and different interface layers orientations are compared and
discussed.

1723

Experimental procedures
Specimen preparation
As mentioned previously, the focus of this paper is
investigations on the eect of interface bers orientation on fracture toughness. For this purpose and to
eliminate the eects of stacking sequence, 24-layers
laminates with general stacking conguration of
#=05 As As and # angles of 0 , 30 , 45 and 60
have been utilized. In designing such lay-ups three constants must be considered. The rst one is to eliminate
the bending twisting coupling, the second one is to
reduce the dierence between the stiness of two cantilevers and the third one is to reduce the thermal
residual stresses. In the selected conguration, not
only the overall exural stiness of the laminates
remains within an acceptable range but also the eect
of bendingbending and bendingtwisting couplings is
minimized.10,12,15,27
E-glass fabric with a specic weight of 200 g/m2 and
thickness of 0.2 mm with less than 10% bers in weft
direction was used through vacuum infusion process
(VIP) to manufacture each 230  300  4.8 mm laminates with EPL 1012 Epoxy resin. The laminates were
kept in room temperature for about 10 days to reach
their ultimate strength as described by the producer
company. The material properties of the laminate are
summarized in Table 1. The initial delamination was
introduced by inserting a PTFE strip with 40 mm thickness and 20 mm width between 12th and 13th layers
during the layup process.
Ten specimens with dimensions of 25  175
 4.8 mm were cut by water jet cutting technique
from each laminate and were sanded carefully to eliminate any source of matrix cracking at the edges and
also capable of better visual investigations. According
to the ASTM D5528 standard, the loading hinges were
bonded by cyanoacrylate adhesive after sucient surface preparation. Figure 1 shows typical specimens with
loading hinges. Figure 2 also illustrates the crack tip of
a unidirectional specimen. The thickness of PTFE strip
is relatively small enough and do not generate a resinrich area in the front of crack-tip as observed in this
gure.29

Table 1. Material properties of

EGlass/epoxy laminate.
E11
E22 E33
G12 G23 G31
12 13
23

22.443 GPa
9.041 GPa
3.318 GPa
0.21
0.4

1724

Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites 35(23)

Figure 1. Specimen 3 side view.

described in the ASTM D5528 standard. In this

study, the modied beam theory (MBT) formulation
is used for this purpose29
GIc

Figure 2. Microscopic view of crack tip for a sample 0//0 fiber

interface orientation.

Experiment procedure
The DCB tests were performed according to the ASTM
standard D5528 using a universal testing machine with
a crosshead speed of 1 mm/min and the load-displacement data were recorded at the same time by the data
acquisition system. A digital video camera with high
optical zoom was set to record the crack length data
during the test. A digital microscope also was provided
to focus on the other edge of specimen to record the
crack initiation and propagation process in microscopic
form with 215  zoom. Also two acoustic emission
(AE) sensors were embedded on upper surface of specimen 20 mm ahead and 80 mm in front of crack-tip for
further investigations. The tests setup and corresponding equipment are illustrated in Figure 3.

Data reduction method

The Mode-I critical energy release rate can be experimentally determined through various methods

3P
2ba j
j

where a is crack length, b is specimen width, j
j is crack

modication length due to the crack-tip rotation,  is
crack opening displacement at load P and P is the critical load.29 According to the standard, the critical load
P would be the load at the initial nonlinear (NL) part of
the load-displacement curve, or the maximum value, or
5% oset load, each of which represents a specic step
in the initial crack growth. Here in this study, the AE
data and the microscopic observations data are also
used as two additional techniques to recognize the
start of initial crack growth.
Finally, the required load and displacements for calculation of GIc are obtained using ve dierent techniques including NL part of p-d curve, AE, 5% oset
load, micro imaging and visual observation. The calculated GIc values from various techniques are compared
later in the following sections.

Results and discussions

Load-displacement curves and fiber bridging
Figure 4 illustrates the load-displacement curves for
DCBs with dierent interface layers orientations. It
can be noticed that all of the obtained-load displacement curves start with a linear behavior until the NL
initiation part and then they increase to a maximum
value with an almost random behavior and in the
third portion they decrease gradually. As the linear
part of load-displacement curve corresponds to the exural stiness of the laminates, its slope is slightly

Nikbakht et al.

1725

Load (N)

Figure 3. Test setup and corresponding equipment.

100.00
90.00
80.00
70.00
60.00
50.00
40.00
30.00
20.00
10.00
0.00
0.00

10.00

20.00

30.00

40.00

UD

30

45

60

50.00

60.00

Displacement (mm)

Figure 4. Load-displacement response for different interface

layers orientation.

procedure, at the initial crack length, no ber bridging

exists, but as the delamination propagates, ber bridging occurs and consequently the GI value increased.
This process continues up to a certain crack length, in
which, the rate of changes of energy release rate
becomes zero due to the balance of ber breakage
and bridging eect. In other words, from this point
up to the end of the test, the energy level in specimen
remains almost constant and equal to the sum of
required energy for primitive crack initiation and
bridged bers complete debonding. Figure 5 shows
the ber bridging length and content for DCBs with
dierent layups.

Initial crack growth criteria

decreased when the interface ber angle increases.
However, the exural stiness of unidirectional laminate is relatively larger.
In terms of energy, the provided energy to the DCB
specimen increases up to the critical energy release rate
of the specimen while the applied displacements on the
loading hinges are increased. At this point, the crack
initiates and incrementally propagates regularly, further crack propagation requires more energy and consequently more displacement should be applied to the
loading hinges. However, Figure 4 shows that although
the delamination has been initiated after NL point and
mathematically load have to decrease when crack
length is increasing, but still the load supported by cantilever beams have increased while the crack propagates. This shows that the necessary energy level for
crack propagation increases as delamination propagates. This process continues to a new level of energy,
relatively larger than that for crack initiation, which is
called crack propagation energy release rate. In this

As mentioned before, four techniques have been proposed by ASTM D5528 for initial crack growth recognition. But, according to the tests results and that
described in the previous section, the maximum load
point here is not an appropriate criterion for initial
delamination growth and it has not been used is this
study due to the existence of vast ber bridging in the
current experiments.
In addition to other three standard methods of NL
point and 5% oset and visual method, AE also has
been utilized numerously in the literature for crack
initiation localization.3033 The rst visible high rise
of cumulative acoustic energy (FVHR-AE) and cumulative events count (CEC) and the load variations are
plotted for all four considered interface ber angles in
Figure 6. The dashed line in Figure 6 shows the condition that the crack has been initially propagated
from the predened insert according to the cumulative
AE energy. As it is obvious, the cumulative energy and
events count show almost the same instance for initial

1726

Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites 35(23)

Figure 5. Visual illustration of fiber bridging length for different interface layers orientations.

Figure 6. Delamination force and cumulative AE energy and events count vs. displacement for all studied interface layers orientation.

crack growth. Although the obtained results using

these two techniques in comparison with that
obtained from the NL point shows advance prediction
of initial crack growth for unidirectional specimens,
for all other three interface bers angles these two
techniques leaded to retard prediction of initial
crack growth.
Also, in this study a digital microscope camera as
was shown in Figure 7, has been xed to focus at the
crack-tip with about 215  zoom as another technique

to visually recognize the initial crack growth (MVIS)

and time. The load point corresponds to each criterion
has been illustrated in Figure 8 and the load and displacement results for all techniques are summarized in
Table 2. It can be seen that the load introduced by AE
methods in all cases provides the lower bond, and the
load corresponding to the visual recognition of initial
crack growth (VIS), (noticeable at the edge of specimen), is the upper bond of the results. Also the results
show that the microscopic visually seen initiation

Nikbakht et al.

1727

Figure 7. Microscopic illustration of delamination initiation for a sample with 60 interface layers laminate.

(MVIS) load for some cases is between nonlinear and

5% oset load. Figure 7 shows the microscopic illustration of the initial delamination growth for interface
ber orientation of 60 for two consequent frames in a
5-s interval. In this gure, the selected zone by an oval
shows the process zone in front of crack-tip and the
arrows show the opening displacement of the cracktip. Comparison of the images in Figure 7(a and b)
shows an increase in the crack opening displacement
and a slight brighter process zone, indicating the
micro-crack generation and matrix degradation in this
zone. In this study, the rst signs that appeared in the
process zone are assumed as microscopic initial delamination criterion.

Delamination initiation toughness, GIc

Figure 9 shows calculated critical energy release rate
values for dierent specimens with various interface
layers orientations. This gure shows that according
to NL point criterion the increase of interface bers
orientation from zero to 30 results in a very slight
increase in GIc values. However, further increase of
interface layer angle leads to a negligible reduction in
GIc value for interface layers with bers in 45 and 60
degree directions. Although the changes of fracture
toughness with interface layers orientation are negligible and are reported by many authors,6,8,14,15,19,23
the trend of this slight increase and decrease of fracture

1728

Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites 35(23)

60.00

UD-S03
5% Offset
Linear (linear)

Nonlinear Point
50.00

Load (N)

40.00

Micro-Visual
Crack Initiation

Visual Crack Initiation

30.00
5% Offset

20.00

Cumulative Events Counts

10.00

First Visable High Rise of Acoustic Energy

0.00
0.00

2.00

4.00

6.00

8.00

10.00

12.00

Displacement (mm)

Figure 8. Illustration of different criteria on load-displacement curve of a UD specimen.

Table 2. Critical load and displacement for different initiation criteria and interface fiber orientation.
Interface fiber orientation
UD

Nonlinear
5% offset
Visual (Macroscopic)
Visual (Microscopic)
FVHR-AE
Cumulative count (CEC)

30

45

60

Load (N)

d (mm)

Load (N)

d (mm)

Load (N)

d (mm)

Load (N)

d (mm)

32.54
37.67
42.71
34.32
26.55
27.50

4.17
5.75
7.12
5.11
2.27
3.46

29.82
38.74
47.10
40.92
30.25
29.48

4.85
6.43
8.50
7.13
4.4
4.26

29.00
32.58
38.80
33.65
26.23
27.33

3.58
5.00
7.70
5.74
4.57
4.71

29.56
32.14
41.92
46.90
22.73
30.16

4.61
5.20
8.19
9.06
3.16
4.74

toughness when interface orientation increases from

zero to 30 and then to 45 and 60 is predicted by
many other researchers.10,16,18,21
Calculated energy release rates using the corresponding loads, at which initial crack growth observed at the
edge of the specimen with non-equipped eyes, provide
the upper band of fracture toughness for all angles
except 60 degrees. Also, the overall trend of changes
is followed by this criterion.
The obtained GIc values from 5% oset loads predict higher fracture toughness for laminates with zero
and 30 interface layers relative to laminates with 45
and 60 because the load drops severely at the NL
point for two later laminates. This behavior may be
due to the existence of a larger process zone and degradation area behind the crack tip of these two laminates and sudden debonding of these areas and
consequently abrupt load drop in load-displacement
of these specimens. Generally, the 5% oset criterion

predicts the fracture toughness values between NL

point and macroscopic visual method and almost
about the microscopic visual criterion.
Although the microscopic method normally and with
a same trend predicts the fracture toughness values lower
than the macroscopic method for zero to 45 interface
layers, however, for 60 interface, this value has
increased very much. According to Figure 7, the online
microscopic observation of crack tip of laminates with
60 interface layers reveals a very unclear and smooth
damage initiation and propagation behind the crack tip
of this laminate, which leads to retarded initiation recognition and higher fracture toughness.
The next group of bars in Figure 9 shows the results
achieved by using cumulative acoustic energy and
cumulative events count. These methods are able to
predict the delamination initiation earlier for laminates
with interface angles of zero, 30 and 45 but still
these results for 60 laminates are controversial.

0.1568

0.1269

0.1108

0.0993

0.0772

0.1346

0.2670

0.150

0.0957

0.4023

0.0908

0.1414

0.200

0.1470

0.250

0.1424

0.300

0.2245

0.350

0.1825

0.2245

0.400

0.3165

0.3339

60

0.1651

30

45

0.2504

UD

0.450

0.1753

0.500

0.1408

Fracture Toughness [kJ/m]

0.550

0.4097

1729

0.4537

Nikbakht et al.

0.100
0.050
0.000
Nonlinear
point
(NL)

5% Offset

Visual Crack Microscopic First Visible Cumulative

(VIS)
Visual Crack High Rise of Events Counts
(MVIS)
Acoustic
(CEC)
Energy
(FVHR-AE)

Different Criteria

Figure 9. Delamination initiation critical energy release rate for different criteria and different interface orientations.

Energy Release Rate [kJ/m]

3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0

UD
45

0.5

30
60

0.0
0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

25.0

30.0

35.0

40.0

Crack Length (mm)

Figure 10. Crack growth resistance curve for different

interface fiber orientation.

These criteria are based on summation of the energy of

each event or summation of the number of events
known as damage signs; so in a situation like laminates
with 60 interface, although events may start to occur
early, they are very low in number and have low energy.
This conclusion also accords with the online observation of crack tip of these laminates.
According to Figure 7 and Figure 9, the visual (VIS
and MVIS) methods are unable to predict the fracture
toughness in case of laminate with the interface of 60//
60 because the failure mechanism and damage process
occur dierently relative to the other three studied
interfaces. At this interface, although the other methods
like FVHR-AE predicted early damage initiation onset
in comparison with the other used techniques, but
damage at the edges of the specimens can be hardly

recognized both macroscopically and microscopically

because the damage occurs very smoothly in matrix
between the plies in a direction from the middle of
the specimen towards the edges.
Although the results show that each technique predicts a dierent value for the fracture toughness
of laminates with interfaces of 0//0, 30//30 and 45//
45, they all address the same trend for the variation of
fracture toughness with interface bers orientation. In
other words, they all show that fracture toughness
increases when the interface changes from 0//0 to 30//
30 and also further increase of the bers angle to
45 at the interface of 45//45 reduces the fracture
resistance.
Comparison between the achieved results for fracture toughness by the methods based on the AE
and the obtained results using the NL point as the
delamination initiation sign, shows that, although
AE technique reveals that the damage has been
initiated in all tested laminates regardless of their
interface orientations, but it does not aect the loaddisplacement of corresponding specimen due to the
microscopic nature of damage development in laminates at this loading level. In other words, individual
microscopic cracks have not coalesced yet at this loading level. However, increasing of the loading value
causes the creation of theses micro-cracks to join
together which consequently causes the load-displacement curve to deviate from its primary linear
behavior.
Figure 9 also shows that the visual technique predicts the fracture toughness with a considerable

1730

Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites 35(23)

Figure 11. Fiber bridging for sample laminate with 45 interface layers orientation.

scattering, which may be due to the nature of these two

techniques that are very operator-skill dependent.

Delamination propagation toughness

Figure 10 illustrates the fracture resistance curve for
specimens with dierent interface layers orientation.
It can be seen that the crack growth resistance eect
(R-Curves) exist for all cases as the ber bridging was
observed for all specimens (see also Figure 5). Also,
results show that as the bers angles at the interface
plies increases, the resistance to delamination propagation also increases, which may infer that the ber bridging has been increased, that leads to more required
energy for crack propagation. Although in all cases
the obtained fracture toughness after crack extension
is much larger than that of calculated at initial crack
growth, in case of 60//60 interface layers, the required
energy is gradually increased up to the nal rupture of
the laminate while for others it reaches to almost a
constant value after a specic crack-propagation
length.
The length of delamination after which the R-curve
shows almost a uniform behavior has been introduced
as the steady-state ber bridging length by many
authors.7,18 According to this denition, the bridging
lengths for specimens with the interface of 0//0 and
30//30 layers are between 15 and 20 mm. Although
Figure 5 and Figure 10 show a less value for unidirectional specimens in comparison to the one with 30//30
interface layers, bridging length for the specimen with
the interface layers of 45//45 is about 30 mm and for
the interface layers of 60//60 cannot be calculated due
to the increasing nature of the corresponding R-curve.
However, Figure 5 reveals the visual illustration of ber
bridging occurs during delamination propagation
between interfaces with dierent ber orientation.

It is obvious that visual bridging length for laminates

with zero and 30 interface layers is clearly more than
that of laminates with 45 and 60 interface layers. It can
be seen that the bridging lengths of laminates with zero
to 60 interface layers are 26, 24, 22 and 21 mm.
Experimental observations such as in Figure 11 show
that the nature of ber bridging for interfaces with two
later angles is dierent from laminates with zero and
30 interfaces. For laminates with zero and 30 interfaces layers, individual bers were bridging while for 45
and 60 interface layers the bundles of bers were bridging. The reduction bridging length visible in experimental observation can be explained mathematically
as the direction of ber bundles in angled interfaces
can limit the bridging length. Thus, although the
visual bridging length reduces for laminate with 45
and 60 interface layers, according to Figure 10, the
propagation fracture energy increases due to bridged
bers bundle which is sti enough to debond completely instead of breakage. Also for zero and 30 interfaces, although the bridged separate bers increase the
visual bridging length, that is not enough to enhance
the bridging length calculated by corresponding
R-curves and considerably aect the propagation fracture energy. Thus, although the visual observations
show that the bridging length decreases when bers
angle at interface plies increases, the fracture resistance
and delamination propagation energy release rate
increases.

Crack-tip of propagated delamination

Figure 12 shows the crack-front for specimens with different interface layers orientations. Results show that
the delamination fronts for all cases are almost perpendicular to the crack growth direction and there are only
slight nonlinearities near the edges. This phenomenon

Nikbakht et al.

1731

Figure 12. Delamination propagation crack front for different interface fiber orientation.

conrms that variations in the fracture toughness of

tested specimens cannot be related to the variation of
crack-front curvatures. Variations of the stress eld at
crack-front and, consequently, the activated damage
mechanisms and their densities near the crack-front
may be the major reason of dierent critical energy
release rate for studied cases.

Concluding remarks
In this paper, the eect of interface layers orientation
on delamination energy release rate was investigated
individually by selecting a specic layup through
which the eect of stacking sequence was almost eliminated. The fracture toughness of selected congurations was calculated via six methods. Results
obtained by standard NL point showed that any
change in interface layers orientation has no signicant
eect on fracture toughness of the selected layup congurations. In fact, by changing two middle layers only,
which act as interface delaminated layers, the fracture
toughness of initial crack growth according to NL

point criterion does not change. However, the predicted

results for fracture toughness using other ve investigated techniques illustrated that by increase of the
interface plies angle up to 30 the fracture toughness
is increased and any further increase of this angle up to
45 causes the reduction of the fracture resistance. Also,
visual techniques show a maximum value for fracture
toughness of interface 60//60, but other techniques
illustrate smaller value.
Results also showed that utilizing the visual technique may increase the scattering of fracture toughness
data. Nevertheless, the microscopic visual technique
beside the linear delamination front may introduce
this technique as more realistic than the NL point as
delamination initiation sign in the load-displacement
curve, which is about 30% smaller than those obtained
with microscopic and 5% than oset techniques. Also,
the cumulative energy and events counts criteria can
predict the early delamination initiation in most of
the cases.
The R-curve eect for dierent interfaces showed
that for all o-axis interface layers, the fracture

1732
toughness of extended crack is about four times greater
than the one calculated at initial crack growth. Also,
the experimental observations showed that the calculation of ber bridging length from R-curves does not
accord with visual observations for laminates with
angled interface layers. Furthermore, the increase of
bers angle at interface plies causes the fracture propagation toughness of the laminate to increase.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites 35(23)

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

Funding
The author(s) received no nancial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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