Modelling the correlation between the electrical resistance and stiffness degradation in conductive composite laminates with complex damage scenarios

The main aim of this work is to propose and validate an analytical strategy to correlate the electric and mechanical response of bi-directional laminates in the presence of both off-axis cracks and delamination. To this end, the attention is initially focused on the electrical problem, developing and validating against numerical results a new, fully analytical, model to properly assess the electrical resistance increase in the laminate as a function of the damage state. Subsequently, an analytical model to predict the laminate stiffness as a function of the damage scenario is derived and later combined with the electric one, thus establishing a direct correlation between the resistance change and the stiffness degradation.