Through-thickness thickness reductions in laminated composites are essential for weight and aerodynamic efficiency, but they can also be the site of damage initiation. Tensile failure mechanisms of modestly tapered laminates, loaded via gripping their thick and thin ends, and a severely tapered laminate, loaded by contact at its tapered section, were investigated via experiments and high-fidelity finite element modelling. The primary failure mode is by delamination, initiated from a terminated ply in the tapered region, which is quite sensitive to a small delamination defect at a ply drop location. Experimental measurements and FE predictions correlate very well in all cases for both location and load. In the severely tapered case, the contact stress influences the delamination and so a fibre failure criterion also needs to be considered, including both the fibre direction tensile stress and its interaction with through-thickness direct and shear stresses imposed by the contact.

层压复合材料厚度的整体厚度减小对于重量和空气动力学效率至关重要，但它们也可能是引发损坏的地方。通过实验和高保真度有限元模型研究了适度渐缩的层压板的拉伸破坏机理，这种应力是通过抓住其厚薄的末端来加载的，而渐缩的层压板通过在其渐缩的截面上接触而加载。主要的失效模式是通过分层而产生的，该分层是从锥形区域中的终止层开始的，该层对层下降位置处的小的分层缺陷非常敏感。在所有情况下，位置和负载的实验测量值和有限元预测都具有很好的相关性。在严重锥形的情况下，接触应力会影响分层，因此还需要考虑纤维破坏准则，