A Revised Shear-Lag Analysis of an Energy Model for Fiber-Matrix Debonding

A shear-lag analysis based on energy is used to predict the amount of debonding that occurs when a fiber fragment breaks into two fragments. The shear-lag analysis reproduces all features of more sophisticated analyses. A drawback of the shear-lag analysis, however, is that it depends on an unknown parameter which can be expressed in terms of an effective fiber volume fraction. If the effective fiber volume fraction can be determined (by experiments or by advanced stress analyses), the shear-lag model can be used to interpret debonding experiments.