INCAM 2019 Conference, 3-5 July 2019, IISc Bangalore.

Modeling delaminations in highly inhomogeneous sandwich shells using a facet

shell element based on the third order zigzag theory

Adnan Ahmed1 and Santosh Kapuria2

1
Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Delhi 110016
and
2
CSIR-Structural Engineering Research Centre, CSIR Campus, Taramani, Chennai 600 113
Presenting Author Adnan Ahmed, Email : add200588@gmail.com

Program : Oral Presentation

Abstract
In this work, we present a four-node facet shell element based on the third order zigzag theory for the analysis
of highly inhomogeneous sandwich shells containing delaminations. A region-wise approach is employed at
the delamination front and a novel hybrid technique is used to enforce the continuity of inplane displacements.
The free mode model is adopted. Results for natural frequencies of highly inhomogeneous sandwich shells
having multiple delaminations are presented and compared with 3D FE results.
Keywords: Finite element, Delaminations, Sandwich shell.

1 Introduction
Delamination is a mode of damage in laminated
structures which is debonding or separation between
adjacent plies [1]. It may occur during manufacturing
due to, e.g. incomplete wetting, air entrapment, large
out-of-plane interlaminar stresses near free edges etc.
or during service due to low velocity impact etc.
Delaminations, generally embedded within the
laminate, may not be visible at all, but their presence
may significantly reduce its strength and alter its
dynamic response, even leading to a catastrophic
failure. The region approach is adopted here for
modeling the delaminations, wherein the
delaminated and the integral segments are divided
into individual laminates. The delaminated layers are
assumed to have no mutual interaction/contact
between them during the deformation and they are
called as the free mode models. A four-node facet
shell element based on the third order zigzag theory
is employed for the analysis. The continuity of the
inplane displacements and rotations at the
delamination front is implemented using a
transformation approach and the relation between the
degrees of freedom (DOFs) of the intact and
delaminated segments is obtained using the proposed
hybrid method.
2 Third order zigzag theory approximations
Consider a multilayered composite laminate having
delaminations both across the laminate thickness and
along the spans. The intact laminate and delaminated
sublaminates are assumed to have a global third order
variation in z combined with a layerwise linear
variation of the inplane displacements, ux and uy
whereas, the transverse displacement, w is
independent of z. For a sublaminate shown as in Fig.
1, the displacement field approximations according to
the third order zigzag theory are given by:
∂w0
ux (x, y, z) u0x (x, y) ∂x
[ ]=[ ] − z ∂w
uy (x, y, z) u0y (x, y) 0
[ ∂y ]
ψ0x (x, y)
+ 𝐑k (z) [ ],
ψ0y (x, y)
w(x, y, z) = w0 (x, y) (1)
w0 is the transverse displacement of the middle
plane.U0x and u0y are the translation components
and ψ0x and ψ0y denote the shear rotation
components of the middle plane, respectively. Rk(z)
is a matrix of layerwise functions of z reported in
Ref. [2] which is obtained by satisfying conditions
of zero transverse shear stresses at the free surfaces
and equal transverse shear stresses at layer interfaces.
The nodal DOF vector is given by:

1
𝐮
̅ = [u0x u0y w0 − w0,x − w0,y ψ0x ψ0y θ0z ψ0z ] Table 1. Natural frequencies of sandwich
(2) cylindrical shells with multiple delaminations

where θ0z and ψ0z correspond to the drilling degrees Mode Frequency in Hz
of freedom.
ZIGT FE 3D FE TOT FE
(HPLS)
PC LS HPLS

1 198.83 174.78 170.97 172.32 242.13

2 228.71 210.89 204.56 200.47 269.22

3 247.68 241.79 239.80 232.68 299.26

Fig. 1 Sublaminate
4 257.25 250.30 249.47 252.94 347.40

4 References
[1] Garg, A. C., Delamination damage mode in
composite structures, Engineering Fracture
Mechanics,29, pp. 557-584, 1988.
[2] Kapuria, S., Kulkarni, S. D. An improved discrete
Kirchhoff quadrilateral element based on third-order
zigzag theory for static analysis of composite and
sandwich plates, International journal for numerical
methods in engineering 69, pp.1948-1981, 2007

Fig. 2 Sandwich shell with multiple delaminations

3 Result
The results for a simply supported sandwich
cylindrical shell with multiple delaminations as
shown in Fig.2 is presented and compared with 3D
FE results in Table 1. The shell is moderately thick
(a/h=10) and deep (R/a=1) with delaminated areas at
two interfaces. The lay-up of its laminate is
(0/90/core/90/0). The shell is modeled with a mesh
size of 20 x 20. The results for the first four natural
frequencies of the shell without delamination and
with delamination obtained using the Point
continuity (PC), Least squares (LS) and Hybrid
point-least square (HPLS) methods of satisfying
continuity conditions are presented here. The present
ZIGT FE results agree well with the 3D FE results for
all the modes. It can be seen that the Hybrid method
yields accurate results which are superior to the other
two methods. The TOT FE on the other hand yields
highly erroneous results and even fails to capture the
mode shapes correctly.