This paper presents a study on transverse tensile fracture properties of a pultruded glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) profile, based on compact tension (CT) and wide compact tension (WCT) tests. Through these tests, both the critical energy release rate and the laminate cohesive law were determined. The test specimens presented a variety of initial notch lengths to assess the specimen geometry dependency. As these tests require the completion of some post-processing tasks to determine the fracture properties of the material, the following methods were applied: ASTM E399, J-integral, Compliance Calibration (CC) and Modified Compliance Calibration (MCC). Test results have shown that the CT tests were unsuccessful in reaching the stable propagation stage and provided overestimations of the critical energy release rate. On the other hand, the WCT tests were effective in achieving a stable propagation stage and results presented a good agreement across visually based methods, both in respect to critical energy release rate and laminate level cohesive laws. An overall value of 20 N/mm was determined for the transverse tensile critical energy release rate of the GFRP profile tested. Some variations were documented across initial notch lengths, but these were considered negligible in face of the intrinsic variability typically found in pultruded GFRP materials. Finally, modified compliance calibration results were found to be significantly lower in respect to other methods, with an average critical energy release rate of about 16 N/mm.
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