COHESIVE ZONE MODELLING OF THE

DEFORMATION  AND FRACTURE OF

THERMOPLASTIC WELD JOINT

Prepared by
Guided by BINOY SATHYADAS
Prof. ARUN B.S S3 Machine Design, Roll no:8
Assistant Professor in mechanical engineering
College Of Engineering Trivandrum

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Department of Mechanical Engineering
CONTENTS

 Introduction
 Literature Review
 Experimental Procedure
 Numerical Simulation
 Results
 Conclusions
 Reference

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INTRODUCTION

Thermoplastic Composites
 Synthetic plastics that can be melted, shaped and cooled to form
specific design shapes.
 Polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene etc
Thermoplastic Welding
 Complex, intricate joints with molecular bonds are more reliable and
effective than fastening or adhesive bonding.
 Common welding techniques are friction welding, ultrasonic welding,
induction welding, gas welding and laser welding.
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 INTRODUCTION-CONTINUED

Cohesive Zone Modelling

 Numerical Modelling of joints is an efficient
and cost saving approach for mechanical
evaluation of welds
 CZM can be used to predict the damage
initiation and crack propagation.
 Traction separation Law uses parameters
such as the energy required to create new
surfaces.
Fig 1: Traction separation Law
 Disadvantage of CZM –Crack path and
strength in different modes have to be known.
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LITERATURE REVIEW

[1] Q.Zhao et.al (2022)

 Developed finite element model to analyse mechanical behavior of
TPC joint assembled by ultrasonic welding
 The results from FEA was validated using experimental data
 Results from cohesive zone modelling was used to optimize the weld
parameters
[2] T.Zhao et.al (2019)
 Experimental evaluation of strength of ultrasonic weld on TPC and
comparison with that of mechanical fasteners
 Load displacement behaviour and out of plane displacement was
measured
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 LITERATURE REVIEW-CONTINUED

[3] M.N.Cavalli et.al (2005)

 Cohesive zone model of ultrasonic weld in Aluminium sheet was
developed to study deformation and fracture of weld joints.
 Failure mechanism of ultrasonic weld spot was explained.

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EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE

Model Preparation & Testing

 Carbon Fibre – fibre and Polyphenylene Sulphide – matrix
 Six Plies
 [0/90⁰]3s stacking sequence
 Hot-press at 320℃ and 1MPa for 20 mins
 Welded using 20KHz Rinco Dynamic microprocessor-controlled
ultrasonic welder with max power output of 3000 W

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 EXPERIMENT-CONTINUED

 Single lap joint was mechanical

tested using Zwick/Roell 250kN
UTM
 Out of Plane displacement of
joint was measured using 2 CCD
Fig 2:Single lap shear joint specimen
cameras combined with vic-3D
data image correlation system

Fig 3: Joint with out of plane displacement

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EXPERIMENT-CONTINUED

Figure 4: Mechanical test setup

(1)specimen(2)hydraulic grips(3)CCD
cameras

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 EXPERIMENT-CONTINUED

Table 1: Material properties of the 5HS woven fabric T300 CF/PPS thermoplastic composite

E11(GPa) E22(GPa) G12(GPa) G13(GPa) G23(GPa) Xt(MPa) Xc(MPa)

55.8 53.8 4.04 44.8 60 757 643

Yt(MPa) Yc(MPa) S12(MPa) S13(MPa) S23(MPa) ρ(g/cm3) ν12 ν23

754 637 119 831 1027 1.55 0.31 0.33

Eij and Gij represents elastic moduli
Xt, Xc are tensile and compressive strengths in longitudinal direction
Yt, Yc are tensile and compressive strength in transverse direction
S12 ,S13 ,S23 are the in-plane and out-of-plane shear strengths

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 EXPERIMENT-CONTINUED

Failure Modes
 Fibre Matrix Debonding : Bare fibres or deep fibre imprints at welded
zone.
 Fibre Cracking : composite failure of adherends by fibre breaking
 Matrix Cracking : composite failure of adherends by matrix rupture

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NUMERICAL SIMULATION

Damage Model of Welded Joint

 Major failure mechanism of thermoplastic welded joint is fibre matrix
debonding
 Cohesive Zone Model is used to model the weld
 Bilinear traction separation law is used

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 NUMERICAL SIMULATION-CONTINUED

 Cohesive zone is characterised

by slope, maximum stress and
area under traction separation
curve
 Quadratic traction initiation
criteria is given by

=1
Figure 5: Bilinear traction-separation law in CZM

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 NUMERICAL SIMULATION-CONTINUED

 For crack propagation, Benzeggagh-Kenane(BK) mixed

mode failure criterion is adopted
 It is expressed as

Where, , , are fracture energies in normal and shear modes of failure

(areas under traction-displacement curves)

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 NUMERICAL SIMULATION-CONTINUED

Damage Model for TPC Adherends

Composite material failure is accounted by Hashin Damage Criterion
Four typical failure indexes in composite materials are
(1) Fibre breakage in tension
+
(2) Fibre breakage in compression

Where Xt, Xc are tensile and compressive strengths in longitudinal

direction

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 NUMERICAL SIMULATION-CONTINUED

(3) Matrix damage in tension

(4) Fibre breakage in compression

Where Yt, Yc are tensile and compressive strength in transverse direction and S12 ,S13 ,S23
are the in-plane and out-of-plane shear strengths

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 NUMERICAL SIMULATION-CONTINUED

The cohesive parameter were directly adopted as the material properties of the utilized
PPS resin as summarized in table 2.

Table 2: Material Properties of Cohesive Zone

Initial Stiffness(MPa) Interfacial Strength(MPa) Fracture Toughness(N/mm)
K0n K0s=K0t σ 0n τ0s=τ0t Gcn Gcs=Gct
3800 3725 90.3 125 0.199 0.65

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RESULTS

 Figure 6 shows the comparison between the numerical and

experimental results regarding the Load displacement and out of
plane displacement
 Simulation results were similar to that of mechanical test results

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Figure 6: Comparison of L-D and OPD response between numerical and experimental results
 RESULTS-CONTINUED

 Figure 6 shows comparison of failure mechanisms of TPC welded

joints obtained from FE model and experiment

(a) Damage of cohesive zone elements (b) Experimental observation of

based on quadratic traction separation ultrasonic spot welded joint
criterion
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Figure 7: Failure of joint by Numerical and Experimental method
RESULTS-CONTINUED

(c) Fibre tensile damage (d) Fibre compressive damage

(e) Matrix tensile damage (f) Matrix compressive damage

Figure 8: Damage of adherends based on Hashin damage criterion

 RESULTS-CONTINUED

 In Numerical simulation failure occurs in the welded zone only.

But in experiment TPC adherends also failed
 This mismatch is because spot weld was entirely modelled with
properties of thermoplastic resin

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CONCLUSIONS

 Cohesive Zone Modelling can be used to investigate the mechanical

behaviour of ultrasonic welded single lap joints in thermoplastic
composites
 CZM results was validated by results from experiment
 Mechanical behavior was almost same but failure modes was not
completely consistent
 CZM cannot be readily used to predict failure. Proper understanding
of the failure modes and material properties is needed to predict failure
in weld on similar material.

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REFERENCES

1) Q.Zhao, H.Wu, X.Chen, Y.Ni, X.An, W.Wu, T.Zhao; Insight into the
structural design strategies of multi-spot ultrasonic welded joints in
thermoplastic composites: finite element analysis (2022); composite
structures 299
2) T.Zhao, C.Rans, I.F.Villegas, R.Benedictus; On sequential Ultrasonic spot
welding as an alternative to mechanical fastening in thermoplastic composite
assemblies: A study of single column multi-row single lap shear joints (2019);
composites part A 120
3) M.N.Cavalli,M.D.Thouless,Q.D.Yang; Cohesive Zone modelling of the
deformation and fracture of spot welded joints (2005); Fatigue fracture
Engineering Material Structures 28;page 861-874
4) T.Zhao, Q.Zhao, W.Wu, L.Xu, Y.Li, Z.Wan, I.F.Villegas, R.Benedictus;
Enhancing weld attributes in Ultrasonic spot welding of carbon fibre-
reinforced composites: effect of sonotrode configuration and process control 23
(2021); composites Part B 211
THANK YOU