<p>Unfolding failure is a sudden delamination occurring in highly curved fiber-reinforced polymer composite laminates when they are subjected to opening bending moments. Depending on the stacking sequences involved, unfolding failure includes intralaminar damage, interlaminar damage and their complex interactions. The use of these laminates in primary structural components of commercial aircrafts has intensified interest in understanding this failure mechanism. To tackle this, a simple phase field formulation to model the onset and propagation of transverse damage in highly curved laminates is presented. Firstly, the Abaqus implementation of the phase field to model intralaminar damage in composite laminates is established, exploiting the analogy between phase field and the heat transfer model to use Abaqus temperature as the phase field damage parameter. In addition, since residual stresses developed during manufacturing processes affect damage propagation, they are incorporated into the formulation as constant residual strains. Secondly, the proposed implementation is validated by performing tests on benchmark problems. Finally, a preliminary analysis of the unfolding failure test is provided to highlight the importance of including residual stresses in the transverse damage evolution.</p>