The understanding of fracture toughness associated with fibre dominated tensile failure is of great important for safety design of composite structrures threatened by extreme loading conditions, such as high/cold temperature and high rate loading. The dynamic fracture toughness of composite laminates in fibre tension is characterized under different temperatures (e.g. -55 °C, 23 °C and 90 °C) with compact tension (CT) sample, at loading rate of 8 m/s using a tension Hopkinson bar intergrated with a experimental chamber. Digital image correlation (DIC) with high-speed imaging is employed for obtaining the full-field strain fields and crack tip location.
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