Anisotropic Stiffness Degradation in Biaxial Tensile Testing of SMC

Biaxial tensile tests allow the investigation of damage evolution in sheet molding compound under biaxial stress states. This is of particular interest due to the different damage phenomena in composite materials. A key challenge is to find a suitable specimen design, because typical cruciform specimens fail in the arms before damage occurs in the area of interest which is the area of the biaxial stress state in the center area of the specimen. A specimen was found which enables the observation of anisotropic stiffness degradation which is one phenomenon of damage. In this proceedings the results of the experiments are presented.