%0 Book Section %A Carpinteri, Alberto %A Paggi, Marco %A Zavarise, Giorgio %B Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Fracture 2005 (ICF11) %D 2005 %F eprints:1927 %I Curran Associates %P 5928-5933 %T Theoretical and numerical investigation on internal instability phenomena in composite materials %U http://eprints.imtlucca.it/1927/ %X Instability phenomena occurring in the microstructure of composite materials are investigated. To this aim, a complete description of the mechanical behavior of bi-material interfaces in composite materials requires the definition of both a cohesive law involving damage for the debonding stage, and a contact model during the closure of the interface. Both formulations are herein presented and implemented in the FE code FEAP. Numerical examples showing the transition from a snap-back instability to a stable mechanical response are presented. %Z 11th International Conference on Fracture, Turin, Italy, March 20-25, 2005