Composites Science and Technology 69 (2009) 1968–1973

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Composites Science and Technology

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Fatigue simulation for titanium/CFRP hybrid laminates using cohesive elements

T. Yamaguchi a, T. Okabe a,*, S. Yashiro b
a
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-01, Aoba-yama, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan
b
Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ehime University, 3 Bunkyo-cho, Matsuyama, Ehime 790-8577, Japan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper presents a new numerical approach for predicting fatigue crack growth in fiber-metal lami-
Received 23 January 2009 nate (FML). Cohesive elements are used to express the complicated damage consisting of transverse
Received in revised form 26 March 2009 cracking, splitting, and interlaminar delamination. The damage growth in the cohesive elements due to
Accepted 29 April 2009
cyclic loading is represented by the conventional damage-mechanics model. The simulation was applied
Available online 8 May 2009
to notched Ti/CFRP hybrid laminates of two stacking configurations. In both cases, the crack growth rate
in the titanium layer and the delamination shape agreed well with experiments reported in the literature.
Keywords:
Complementary analysis for crack extension in the metal sheet is performed out of consideration of the
A. Hybrid composites
B. Fatigue
damage in internal FRP layers. The numerical results demonstrated that the underlying damage modes in
C. Delamination the FRP layer must be taken into account to predict the fatigue crack growth at the metal layer in FMLs.
C. Finite-element analysis Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Cohesive zone model

1. Introduction because it incorporated an assumption concerning delamination

Fiber-metal laminate (FML), made of polymer matrix composite
plies with metal sheets, is widely used as a fuselage skin material
for aircraft. FML is a hybrid material with high fatigue tolerance,
specific strength, and stiffness compared to conventional metal
structural materials. This hybrid material also has a high resistance
to impact and lightning strikes that fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP)
laminates do not have [1]. In recent years, aerospace researchers
have endeavored to develop FML with a titanium alloy face sheet
for future high-speed aircraft because titanium has higher creep
resistance than aluminum alloy [2–4].
Aerospace structures may include stress concentrations, such as
pin-loaded holes and notches. These stress concentrations in com-
posite laminates cause a complicated damage growth including
transverse cracking, splitting, and delamination. Burianek and
Spearing [4] conducted a fatigue test for open-hole titanium/car-
bon fiber-reinforced plastic (Ti/CFRP) hybrid laminates. They indi-
cated that two damage modes are critical to the stiffness
reduction: face sheet cracking and the associated delamination in
the wake of the crack. FML researchers focus on the crack growth
rate in the metal plies because of its significance for stiffness
reduction and ease of observation. Burianek et al. [3] predicted
the crack-growth rate by using a finite-element method that in-
cluded delamination at the interface. However, this model could
not reproduce the real damage progress seen in experiment results
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +81 22 795 6984; fax: +81 22 795 6983.
E-mail address: okabe@plum.mech.tohoku.ac.jp (T. Okabe).
shape and ignored any damage occurring in the internal FRP layer.
Okabe and Yashiro [5] proposed new finite-element method for
predicting fatigue damage progress in composite laminates under
cyclic loading using cohesive elements. The damage growth in
the cohesive elements due to cyclic loading is represented by the
conventional damage-mechanics model. Yashiro and Okabe. [6]
numerically and experimentally investigated the damage progress
in holed CFRP cross-ply laminates under tensile cyclic loading. The
authors [7] then applied this method to open-hole titanium/glass
fiber-reinforced plastic (Ti/GFRP) hybrid laminates to give some
indication of a possible application to FML. The crack growth rate
of the titanium layer and the delamination shape at the interface
of the Ti/GFRP and the 90°/0° interface agreed well with the exper-
iment results. However, the above research only fitted cohesive
parameters so that the predicted results can reproduce the exper-
iment results on a case-by-case basis.
This paper seeks to verify the efficiency and versatility of the
proposed approach. We investigated the damage progress in
notched Titanium/CFRP hybrid laminates of two different stacking
sequences. We then compared the predicted damage pattern with
experiments reported by Burianek and Spearing [4].
2. Model
Fig. 1 illustrates a finite-element model for notched Ti/CFRP
laminate of [Ti/0/90/02]s as an example of a simulation model.
The model is separated into individual layers representing the tita-
nium layer, 0° layer, 90° layer and 0° layer (Fig. 1). The titanium

0266-3538/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.compscitech.2009.04.020
 T. Yamaguchi et al. / Composites Science and Technology 69 (2009) 1968–1973 1969

a Analytical region
a
Traction

Titanium Double node

CFRP
Titanium u
n
Notch
Δb
b Direction of virtual crack extension l Δt
Δ
z
y x
b Double node u

Ti layer
Δn
0 layer
90 layer Traction
0 layer Δb
Cohesive elements for split
Δt
Notch z
y
l
Fig. 1. Finite-element model for notched Ti/CFRP laminates. (a) Schematic. (b) x
Finite-element mesh. Eight-node cohesive elements were also inserted into all 0°/
90° ply interfaces for the delamination. Fig. 2. Cohesive zone model. (a) Four-node cohesive element for split and
transverse crack. (b) Eight-node cohesive element for delamination.

layer is assumed to be isotropic, and each ply of the CFRP laminate

is assumed to be an orthotropic homogeneous body. The model
consists of linear-elastic, four-node Mindlin-plate elements that relative displacement is the relative displacement with no traction
permit consideration of out-of-plane deformation. in the cohesive element. At the critical energy release rate, Gic (i = I,
In this modeling, we consider the following damage modes: (1) II, III), equal to the area of the shaded region in Fig. 3, the critical
titanium cracking, (2) splitting in 0° layer, (3) transverse cracking relative displacement is defined as follows:
in 90° layer, (4) delamination at the Ti/CFRP interface, and (5) 2GIc 2GIIc 2GIIIc
delamination at the 0°/90° interface. Dnc ¼ ; Dtc ¼ ; Dbc ¼ ð2Þ
sn max sini st max sini sb max sini
Cohesive elements are used to express these damage modes, ex-
cept for titanium cracking. To introduce the effect of cyclic loading, Here, sini is the initial value of parameter s (sini = 0.999 in this
Kachanov’s damage progress law [8] was modified to apply to the study). Parameter s is calculated as a function of the relative
residual strength of cohesive elements. Generally, Paris’ law is used displacements.
to represent the crack growth rates of metals. Therefore, the virtual   
~j
s ¼ min smin ; max 0; 1  jD ð3Þ
crack closure technique (VCCT) plus Paris’ law were used to predict
~ ¼ fDn =Dnc ; Dt =Dtc ; Db =Dbc gT
D
crack growth rate in the titanium layer.
To reduce the calculation cost, we do not adopt incremental The cohesive elements defined above act as follows ((a)–(c)):
analysis capturing the detailed loading path of the cycles. Damage
is assumed to accumulate only when the maximum stress is ap- (a) A cohesive element acts as a penalty element, maintaining
plied. Moreover, not much damage is accumulated during one the continuity of displacement at the element interface
loading cycle. Therefore, we adopt the method of evaluating the while s = sini.
accumulation of damage every several cycles. Since this model as-
sumes that the damage progresses only under tension, it cannot
address the damage growth under a tension–compression com-
bined cyclic load. Tn
2.1. Finite-element analysis using cohesive elements

A cohesive element utilizes the relation between traction and

relative displacement of the crack surface (Fig. 2). The relation be-
tween the traction T and the relative displacement D is defined
τ nmax s ini
using the residual-strength parameter for the elements, s, pro-
posed by Geubelle and Baylor [9].
8 9 2 s sn max 38 9
0 0
< Tn >
> = 6 1s Dnc > Dn >
7< =
s st max
T ¼ Tt ¼ 64
0 1s Dtc
0 7 Dt ¼ D
5> >
 coh D ð1Þ
: >
> ; s sb max : ; G Ic
Tb 0 0 1s D
Db
bc

Subscripts n, t and b indicate the cracking modes of normal ten-

sile deformation, in-plane shear, and out-of-plane shear. simax and 0
Dic (i = n, t, b) are the strength and the critical relative displacement Δ nc (1 - sini ) Δ nc Δn
in each cracking mode. The term ‘‘strength” represents a criterion
for starting the damage process in cohesive elements. The critical Fig. 3. Schematic of the traction-separation laws used in this paper.
1970 T. Yamaguchi et al. / Composites Science and Technology 69 (2009) 1968–1973

sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
(b) The residual-strength parameter become small according to      
sn 2 st 2 sb 2
the relative displacement once the cohesive element is F¼ þ þ
sn max st max sb max
stressed beyond its strength (0 < s < sini).
(c) Cohesive elements generate a crack surface when they Here, a dimensional parameter F is introduced to express the stress
absorb energy equal to the critical energy release rate (s = 0). state at the crack tip. N denotes the number of cycles.
(d) s = sini is assigned to express the contact state if the corre-
sponding cohesive element is under compression. 2.3. Calculation of titanium crack growth rate using VCCT

Next, we present the formulation for a finite-element analysis It is well known that the fatigue of metal materials obeys Paris’
with cohesive elements. The virtual work for the analytical region law. Therefore, the virtual crack closure technique (VCCT) plus
V including the cohesive zone Scoh is as follows: Paris’ law were used to predict crack growth rate in the titanium
Z Z Z layer. Cracking in the titanium layer was assumed to originate from
r : dE dV þ T  dDdS ¼ f  dudS ð4Þ the notch and propagate perpendicular to the loading direction as
V Scoh St
in Fig. 1. The energy release rate G in the titanium layer is calcu-
Here, r is the stress tensor, T is the strain tensor, u is the displace- lated using the VCCT with:
ment vector, f is the external force vector on the prescribed bound-
f x D0
ary St, and d is the virtual component. The following relationship is G¼ ð12Þ
obtained for the relative displacement D in the cohesive elements t Da0
for delamination. where fx is the nodal force at the crack tip, t is the thickness of the
8 9 2 3 titanium layer, D0 is the crack-opening displacement one node be-
< Dn >
> = 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0    
6 1 0 ^l
u ^l
u hind the crack tip, and Da0 is the element size ahead of the crack tip.
D ¼ Dt ¼ 4 0 2 0 1 0 0 2 07
tl tu
5 ¼ L
: >
> ; ^
u u ^
u The stress intensity factor K is related to the energy release rate and
l
Db 0 1 0 0 t2l 0 1 0 0 t2u the titanium modulus E in the plane stress condition using
ð5Þ pffiffiffiffiffiffi
K¼ EG: ð13Þ
T
^ ¼ fu
u ^ v^ ^ hx
w hy g
The crack growth rate in the titanium layer is expressed using
Here, tl and tu are the thicknesses of the lower and upper layers of Paris’ law.
delamination. The displacement vector of element f u ^ u gT is cal-
^l u da
i
culated from shape functions N and nodal displacement vector Ûe. ¼ CðDKÞm ð14Þ
dN
  " #
^l
u N1 N2 N3 N4 0 0 0 0 ^ ^e
¼ U e ¼ N coh U
^u
u 0 0 0 0 N1 N2 N3 N4 3. Simulation results
ð6Þ
3.1. [Ti/0/90/02]s
i i
N = N I5, I5: unit matrix (5  5)
^e ¼ fU
^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^1 ^2 ^3 ^ 4 gT First, fatigue damage progress was simulated for notched Ti/
U l U l U l U l U u U u U u U u CFRP hybrid laminates to verify whether our proposed method is
With the above details, the matrix form of the virtual work prin- applicable to CFRP-based FMLs. The lay-up of the laminate is [Ti/
cipal can be represented by 0/90/02]s. The finite-element model is illustrated in Fig. 1. A one-
quarter analytical model was used assuming the symmetric dam-
^ T KU
dU ^ ¼ dU
^Tf ð7Þ age state in the specimen. The model is separated into individual
K ¼ K M þ K coh ð8Þ layers representing the titanium layer, 0° layer, 90° layer, and 0°
Z
layer. The crack in titanium layer was assumed to grow from the
KM ¼ BTM DM BM dV ð9Þ notch tip toward the y-direction. Splits were represented by
VM
Z four-node cohesive elements in the 0° layer from the notch tip
K coh ¼ N Tcoh LT D
 coh LN coh dS ð10Þ along the load direction. Eight-node cohesive elements for delam-
Scoh
ination were introduced into all ply interfaces.
where Û is the nodal displacement vector; f is the external force The specimen modeled has a width of 38.1 mm and a half-
vector; K, B, and D are the stiffness matrix, strain–displacement ma- length of 50 mm with a single notch of 2 mm. The face sheet was
trix and constitutive coefficients. Suffixes M and coh denote the 0.127 mm thick, and the single-ply thickness of CFRP was
Mindlin plate elements and the cohesive element. 0.142 mm. The stress ratio was R = 0.1, and the maximum applied
Eq. (7) is nonlinear since the stiffness matrix of cohesive ele- stress levels were 314, 419, and 524 MPa. Thermal residual stresses
ments Kcoh varies with the relative displacement. We used a di- for the temperature change (DT = 159 K) were also considered.
rect-iteration method [10] to solve the nonlinear equation. The material properties used in this simulation are listed in Ta-
ble 1. For the values of Paris’ law parameters C and m, we refer to
2.2. Fatigue law in cohesive elements the reported experiment and selected 8.66  108 (C) and 2.66 (m).
These values for Paris’ law are derived from an experiment con-
This study introduces the concept of damage mechanics pro- ducted by Boeing for Ti 15-3. Yashiro and Okabe [6] numerically
posed by Kachanov into each cohesive element to express the ef- investigated the damage progress in holed CFRP cross-ply lami-
fect of cyclic loading. The following equation is applied for the nates under tensile cyclic loading using our method as stated in
residual strength parameter s of cohesive elements which are in Section 1. They fitted the cohesive parameters and demonstrated
the damage process zone and under tension [5]: good agreement in the damage patterns and the damage size be-
tween the static tensile test and the fatigue tests. We subsequently
ds Fb adopted the cohesive parameters supplied by Yashiro for the
¼ a c ð11Þ
dN s damage to CFRP laminates (transverse cracks, splitting, and
 T. Yamaguchi et al. / Composites Science and Technology 69 (2009) 1968–1973 1971

Table 1
σ max = 314 MPa Experiment (σmax = 314 MPa)
Material properties used in the analysis.
σ max = 419 MPa Experiment (σmax = 419 MPa)
(a) Material properties
CFRP IM-7/PIXA-M σ max = 524 MPa Experiment (σmax = 524 MPa)
Longitudinal Young’s modulus, GPa 155 -5
Transverse Young’s modulus, GPa 6.9 10
In-plane shear modulus, GPa 5.1
Out-of-plane shear modulus, GPa 3.6

Crack growth rate (m/cycle)

In-plane Poisson’s ratio 0.35 -6
10
Out-of-plane Poisson’s ratio 0.49
Longitudinal thermal expansion coefficient, 106 K1 0.9
Transverse thermal expansion coefficient, 106 K1 4.5
-7
Titanium alloy Ti 15-3 10
Young’s modulus, GPa 109
Poisson’s ratio 0.33
Thermal expansion coefficient, 106 K1 8.64 -8
10
Split, transverse crack 0°/90° Interfaces Ti/CFRP interface
(b) Properties of the cohesive elements
snmax, MPa 83.7 40 40 -9
10 0 10 20 30 40
stmax, MPa 100 60 60
sbmax, MPa 100 60 60 Crack length (mm)
Glc, J/m2 430 700 210
GIIc, J/m 2
1200 1200 450 Fig. 5. Comparison of the predicted crack growth rates and the test results of [Ti/0/
GIIIc, J/m 2
1200 1200 450 90/02]s laminates.
Fatigue, a 1.0  105 5.0  l05 3.5  l05
Fatigue, b 4.0 4.0 3.0
Fatigue, c 4.0 4.0 3.0 important to note that the crack growth rate gradually decreases
during the initial stage and becomes constant in the middle of
the fatigue simulation. This restraining mechanism is due to the
delamination at 0°/90° interface). The cohesive parameters for the bridging effect of the 0° ply, which is immediately beneath the me-
Ti/CFRP interface were adjusted so that simulation results can tal face sheet. Moreover, the simulation results with maximum
match the experiment results in delamination size. cyclic stresses of three different values agreed well with the exper-
The delamination growth at the Ti/CFRP interface is schemati- iment results.
cally illustrated with experiments in Fig. 4. The contour in Fig. 4
represents the residual strength parameter, s, of the cohesive ele- 3.2. [Ti/90/0/902]s
ments at the Ti/CFRP interface. The delamination of the triangle
shape progressed in the wake of the titanium crack. The predicted Burianek and Spearing [4] observed the fatigue damage for the
delamination also has the same characteristics as the experiment Ti/CFRP hybrid laminates with a configuration of [Ti/90/0/902]s.
results where the delamination angle near the crack tip sharpens under cyclic loading. In this configuration, they reported that the
gradually with increasing cycles. transverse cracks along with the titanium crack were observed in
The predicted fatigue crack growth rate is depicted in Fig. 5 as a the external 90° layer, and delamination at the internal 90°/0°
function of the crack length for the [Ti/0/90/02]s laminate. It is interface was also observed. Our simulation model is quite useful

s
0 .9 9 9
0 .9
0 .8
Simulation

0 .7
0 .6
0 .5
0 .4
Load direction

0 .3
0 .2
0 .1
0

Delamination
10 mm
Experiment

Notch

a~
~ 8.7 mm a~
~ 19 mm a~
~ 23 mm
Fig. 4. Comparison of the predicted delamination profiles at the Ti/CFRP interface and the test results of [Ti/0/90/02]s laminates.
1972 T. Yamaguchi et al. / Composites Science and Technology 69 (2009) 1968–1973

Delamination at Ti/CFRP interface

Titanium crack

Delamination at 90°/0° interface

Split (0° layer)

Notch

Transverse crack (90° layer) 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 0.999
s
10 mm

Fig. 6. Fatigue-damage state when the titanium crack extended to 26 mm.

to capture the fatigue damage progress consisting of several dam-
age modes like this. We applied the simulation model to the [Ti/90/
0/902]s laminate and compared its results with the experiment
results.
The model was divided into four layers representing the tita-
nium layer, 90° layer, 0° layer, and 90° layer. Four-node cohesive
elements for splits were inserted in the 0° layer from the notch
tip along the load direction. Eight-node cohesive elements for
delamination were also introduced into all ply interfaces. More-
over, four-node cohesive elements for a transverse crack were in-
serted from the notch tip across the ligament in the 90° layer.
The model size and the notch length were the same as shown in
Section 3.1. The maximum applied stress levels were determined
so that the far-field stress level in the titanium layer matched that
on [Ti/0/90/02]s laminate. It should be noted that we used the
cohesive parameters used in Section 3.1.
The predicted damage state when the titanium crack extends to
26 mm is seen in Fig. 6. The characteristics of the predicted damage
state are summarized as follows. Transverse cracking propagated
in the 90°layer keeping the same length as the crack in the tita-
nium layer. Delamination between the 90° ply and the 0° ply prop-
agated with a triangular shape along the transverse cracking
direction. The delamination at the Ti/CFRP interface was less than
that at the 90°/0° interface. These are consistent with observations
reported by Burianek and Spearing [4].
Fig. 7a compares the predicted crack growth rate of the tita-
nium layer in the [Ti/90/0/902]s laminate to the experiment results.
The simulation results agreed well with the experiment results.
The proposed method applies to many stacking sequences using
known parameters.
Finally, we performed the analytical prediction without consid-
ering the transverse crack growth and investigated how the crack
growth rate differed from experiments. When the model did not
consider the transverse cracks, there was no delamination between
the 0° ply and the 90° ply, although the delamination at the Ti/
CFRP interface propagated extensively. The crack-opening dis-
placement (COD) near the titanium crack tip is plotted in Fig. 8.
The model without transverse cracking yields a smaller COD near
the crack tip because the intact 90° layer allows the FRP layer to
have strong bridging properties. The titanium crack growth rate
calculated by the model assuming the intact 90° layer is presented
in Fig. 7b. The calculated rates of the crack growth were lower be-
cause the COD near the crack tip is estimated to be small. This evi-
dence confirms that the numerical model must consider the
underlying damage progress in the FRP layer to predict the fatigue
crack growth at the metal layer in FMLs.

a σ max = 151 MPa Experiment (σmax = 151 MPa) b Model without transverse cracks (σmax = 151 MPa)
σ max = 201 MPa Experiment (σmax = 201 MPa) Model with a transverse crack (σmax = 151 MPa)
σ max = 252 MPa Experiment (σmax = 252 MPa) Experiment (σ max = 151 MPa)
-5 -6
10 10

-6
10
da/dN (m/cycle)
da/dN (m/cycle)

-7 -7
10 10

-8
10

-9 -8
10 10
0 10 30 0 10 20 30 40
20 40
Crack length (mm) Crack length (mm)

Fig. 7. The crack growth rate in titanium layer of [Ti/90/0/902]s laminates. (a) Comparison of the predicted crack growth rates and the test results. (b) The effect of an
existence of the damage in FRP layer.
 T. Yamaguchi et al. / Composites Science and Technology 69 (2009) 1968–1973 1973

0.01 reported in the literature. The results indicated that our proposed
Model with a transverse crack
simulation can be applied to FMLs of various lay-ups.
Crack opening displacement (mm)

Model without transverse cracks

0.009 We also numerically investigated the effects of the damage in
FRP layers on the crack extension in the Ti layer. The crack growth
0.008 rate in the Ti layer, calculated by the model with no damage in FRP,
was much smaller than that with damage extension in FRP layers
0.007 due to the bridging effects of the FRP layer.

0.006 References

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