Comparative study of cohesive zone and virtual crack closure techniques for three-dimensional fatigue debonding

Adhesively bonded metallic and/or composite material structures are present as principal structural elements in several fields, such as aeronautics, automotive, nautical, and wind energy. A numerical method able to reproduce three-dimensional fatigue debonding and, in the case of composites, delamination evolution in bonded structures is therefore necessary to improve their performances. In this paper, a comparison of the performances of a cohesive zone model developed by some of the authors and the Virtual Crack Closure Technique (VCCT) embedded in the software Abaqus (v. 6.11) is made on mode I, mode II, and mixed-mode I/II loaded cracks in bonded assemblies.