Numerical computations of the strain energy release rate for a comparative analysis of the virtual crack closure technique and a cohesive zone model and relative meshes

The present data includes the numerical results analysed and discussed in the article “A local comparison of the virtual crack closure technique and a cohesive zone model in calculating the strain energy release rate for large and curved delaminations” be the same authors. In this work, three non-standard specimens for composite delaminations are simulated numerically. These are a reinforced Double Cantilever Beam (R-DCB), a reinforced End-Load Split (R-ELS) with standard cohesive length and a reinforced End-Load Split with doubled cohesive length (R-ELS2). The presence of reinforcing plates produces large and curved delamination fronts. A specific comparative strategy is adopted and described in the article.

The simulations are used to compare locally the computations of the strain energy release rate of the virtual crack closure techniques and a cohesive zone model implementing a J-integral formulation. Five load-displacement combinations per specimen are analysed; for each of these combinations, five delamination fronts are considered. This results in 75 possible comparisons of the computed strain energy release rate decomposed in its modes. Given the mesh dependency of the VCCT, the mesh of each VCCT simulation is also included. The presend dataset and its associated article thus provide a first local comparison between the two most used techniques for delamination analysis for large and curved delaminations.