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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
Much work has recently been done on the interphases between fibres and polymers and it is now clear that they are usually brittle. This requires a re-examination of our basic ideas on how composites achieve their strength. The Kelly-Tyson approach, which is based on ductile metal behaviour, has never received unequivocal support. In addition, work during the last ten years in the author's laboratories indicates that it is incorrect in one of its major predictions: that the stress-strain plots of short aligned fibre composites should be curves. In this paper we present the evidence and introduce a new failure model which eliminates these difficulties.