The compressive properties of fibre-reinforced composites are significantly inferior to their tensile equivalent. This factor, allied to the 'no-damage growth' design philosophy currently used in aerospace, results in significantly oversized structures. The current work aims to improve the compressive response of composites by compartmentalizing unstable compressive failure in large fibre-reinforced structures. It proposes a ply-discontinuity feature capable of arresting unstable crack propagation in
multidirectional Carbon Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) laminates subjected to compressive loading. By replacing 0° oriented plies by carefully selected off-axis ones, the feature is capable of dispersing and dissipating compressive kink-band propagation energy as well as modifying the laminate’s failure modes. Consequently, the laminate achieves arrest of rapidly growing unstable cracks (propagating at ~1 km/s) and the specimen’s ultimate failure strain is increased. To validate the proposed concept, test
specimens were designed and manufactured using IM7/8552 carbon-fibre reinforced epoxy. Through
compressive tests, the feature’s crack-arrest capability was shown, remarkably increasing by nearly a third the strain tolerance upon final failure, when compared to the respective baseline.