## 1 Introduction  
Utilizing composite laminates in aircraft structures plays quite an important role owing to their low weight, high strength, the capability to design varieties of geometries and other advantages. The ultimate load and failure type of composite structures are significant parameters to satisfy the engineering requirement, especially those discontinuous structural components such as laminates with notches or open holes that may cause complex stress states and damages [1, 2, 3, 4]. Failure analysis of composite panels containing notches or holes is regarded as an important subject in structural design [5, 6]. An open hole existing in a laminate can lead to stress concentration that produces complicated damage processes and failure mechanisms [7, 8]. The breakage occurring around the open hole induces the redistribution of the stresses in the composite laminates that contributes to causing the catastrophic failure [9]. Matrix cracking, fiber breakage, delamination, etc., observed in an open hole laminate subjected to tensile loads are common failure mechanisms [10, 11, 12]. Many analytical and numerical models have been used to predict the failure strength of composite laminates with open holes [13, 14]. In most cases, linear elasticity and a failure criterion are utilized to forecast the onset of failure in composite structures [15, 16]; some of these models are examined in the world wide failure exercise (WWFE) [17, 18, 19]. Although many criteria distinguish the failure of fiber and matrix and take progressive failure modeling into account [20; 21; 22], they are not available to capture the interaction between the constituents at the microscale level. Employing micromechanics to acquire the damage states of composite structures is of great significance [23; 24]. Variations on constituent material properties along with the microstructural characteristics, for instance, the fiber volume fraction, orientation, and microlevel architecture can be taken into account by using microscopic mechanical methods to better research the failure mechanism of composite structures. In addition, the micromechanical method can also be easy to estimate the interactive effects among the different constituents in the composites. The generalized method of cells (GMC), initiated by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [25; 26] and then developed for improving the computational efficiency [27], is actually analytical, which has been proved to be an extremely effective micromechanics method. Its formulation contains the application of a few governing equations using a homogenization method, by which traction and displacement continuity equations are imposed at the whole subcell interfaces and the periodic boundaries of the repeating unit cell (RUC) in an average sense. A rectangular RUC divided into desired quantities of rectangular subcells is used to account for composites properties, and each subcell is available to occupy a specified material. These continuity conditions directly contribute to formulating a strain concentration matrix that is related to the local subcell strains to the global average applied strains. Given the local constitutive law, the subcell stresses can be represented by the global average applied strains. Ultimately, the entire RUC stiffness is obtained by employing a homogenization strategy. It is robust enough to implement a multiscale framework using the micromechanics model GMC together with the FEM, wherein the integration points of the finite element model call the GMC as the material point response, and damage in the constituents in the composite laminates are captured locally via the GMC [28]. The main objective of the current work is to use the GMC to model damage and failure mechanisms in the composite laminates with an open hole under tensile loading, and the results obtained are compared to those obtained from the tests and the popular Hashin failure criteria.