Abstract
In contrast to the macromechanical analysis in which a composite material is usually taken to be homogeneous, a simplified analysis model is proposed in this article to ex amine the inhomogeneity effect on the stress intensity factor of the crack embedded in a fiber-reinforced composite material. Two composite materials (glass/epoxy and boron/epoxy) are used to illustrate the theoretical predictions, and the primary finding is that the crack size should be at least 3 orders of magnitude larger than the fiber diameter to vindicate the homogeneity assumption. © 1987, Technomic Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved.