Abstract
The splitting mechanism in notched unidirectional glass/epoxy composites under tensile loading has been studied to gain insight into this failure process. An already- available mathematical expression based on the J-integral technique proposed by Tirosh [1] has been used for this purpose. This expression relates the length of the split crack to the in-plane elastic constants of the composite, original notch length, inter facial shear yield stress, and the applied tensile stress. This model has been used to distinguish between the quality of fiber-matrix bonding in two E-glass fiber-reinforced epoxy composites by evaluating their interfacial shear yield stress using transversely edge-notched unidirectional composites. The experimental results demonstrate that an important requirement to control the length of the split crack is higher fiber-matrix in terfacial shear yield stress. Also, the Tirosh model is found to effectively predict the progression of splitting in notched unidirectional composites.

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