Damage Initiation in the Short Beam Shear Test of Composite Materials Using Stiffness Reduction.

The purpose of this study was to analyze damage initiation in the short beam shear test for composite materials. This thesis proposes a means of predicting damage initiation in a composite beam using finite element techniques and a continuum mechanics failure criteria. The first objective was to accurately determine the stress field. The second objective was to employ a damage criteria based on the elemental stress field. The final objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of using an elemental stiffness reduction to study damage initiation and progression. The finite element code used was NOSAPM. Keywords Composite materials, Shear test, Stiffness reduction, Damage initiation, Finite elements.