Lecture (VL) 2 hours per week (3 ECTS, is held in winter semester)

This course introduces the basic concepts of damage and failure of lightweight structures:

• Material behavior under quasi-static monotonic, and quasi-static cyclic (fatigue) loading
• Cyclic loading case: analysis methods for fatigue damage intitiation, and fatigue damage growth
• Particular damage modes and mechanisms for homogeneous isotropic (e.g., metals), and heterogeneous orthotropic (e.g., fiber reinforced laminated composites) materials
• Composite materials: intra-laminar, and inter-laminar (delamination) damage
• Analytical methods, and particular aspects of the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) numerical implementation