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This paper introduces a novel mechanism-resolved phase-field fracture model for composite shells by treating the constitutive law as a replaceable operator, enabling explicit separation of fibre, inter-fibre, and interaction fracture mechanisms. This approach allows for the integration of either closed-form or learned constitutive operators, verified through a three-tier certification protocol for algebraic, solver, and data admission correctness. Numerical studies on notched composite shells demonstrate that fibre orientation dictates the damage envelope and load capacity, while curvature induces through-thickness fracture asymmetry uncapturable by traditional midsurface models.
Composite shell fracture is now separable into distinct fibre, inter-fibre, and interaction mechanisms, unlocking learned constitutive models and revealing curvature-driven through-thickness asymmetry.
Phase-field models of fracture in fibre-reinforced shells are usually formulated against a single closed-form stored energy, so that the stress, consistent tangent and plane-stress condensation are derived and verified for that expression alone. Here the constitutive law enters instead as a replaceable operator. The Green-Lagrange strain of a geometrically exact Reissner-Mindlin shell is pulled back through the Cholesky factor of the reference metric and resolved on four mutually orthogonal invariants with an exact closure identity, making the separation into fibre, inter-fibre and interaction channels a change of basis rather than a modelling assumption. On a curved midsurface, the metric, Cholesky factor and fibre direction vary through the thickness through the shifter I - zeta b, and the invariants inherit that dependence. The tension-compression split, channel degradation, plane-stress condensation, consistent tangent and finite-element assembly are all expressed in the channel potentials and their derivatives, allowing either closed-form or learned operators. The fibre-transverse interaction energy is stored once and degraded by the product of the fields whose mechanisms it couples. Six conditions define admissible operators; the two linear invariants are proved convex in the deformation gradient, the geometric tangent is shown independent of the material tangent, and the plane-stress condensation is regular wherever the residual stiffness is positive. A three-tier protocol certifies the algebra, solver state and admission of a state as training data. Numerical studies on notched IM7/8552 shells verify the discretisation in thin and curved regimes and show that fibre orientation governs the damage envelope and load capacity, while curvature drives a through-thickness fracture asymmetry that a single midsurface field cannot represent.