Abstract
Degradations initiated near the edges of a laminate can have a significant effect on its state of degradation, even at the core. Indeed, results from the literature show that laminates which have the same stress state at the core can have completely different states of degradation, even far away from the edges. The paper discusses the influence of the edge effect on damage initiation and propagation for a specific example. A computational micromechanical approach to the degradation of laminated composites was developed recently at LMT-Cachan. This is a hybrid approach in which, depending on the scale, the mechanisms are described using continuous damage mechanics or finite fracture mechanics. Initially developed for static loading, this technique is being extended to fatigue and environmental effects. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the capability of such an approach to take into account major observations during cyclic loading in an oxidizing atmosphere, even when edge effects are significant. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.