Experimental and numerical study on DCB specimens bonded with similar and dissimilar materials

In this paper, the influence of the bonding materials on the failure modes and the critical energy release rate (CERR) is studied through the double cantilever beam (DCB) test. The test results show that the failure mode and CERR of the bonded structure are closely related to the bonding materials, and three failure modes, i.e., the cohesive failure, the interface failure and the mixed-mode failure are identified on the bonding surface. The finite element method is used to simulate the interface debonding behavior of the DCB test specimens, and the influence of material randomness on the interface failure is introduced. A XFEM/CZM coupled approach is proposed to model the crack migration phenomena. The predicted results have a good agreement with the experimental results.