Evaluation of the climbing drum peel (CDP) test for the determination of the mode I fracture toughness of monolithic laminated composite specimens
Résumé
The inter-laminar fracture toughness is a measure of the delamination resistance of a laminated composite system. Its rigorous experimental evaluation requires a number of precautions in the choice of the test setup and post-treatment. In this paper, we consider two different tests for the mode I fracture toughness: the classical Double Cantilever Beam (DCB) test and the Climbing Drum Peel (CDP) test, which is standard in the "adhesives" community and which is first applied here to monolithic composite specimens. The two tests are compared in terms of setup, post-treatment and results on different types of specimens. The CDP appears to have a number of advantages over the DCB, and thus it represents an interesting alternative for the determination of the mode I fracture toughness.