Paper number 776

INVESTIGATION OF PROGRESSIVE AND ULTIMATE FAILURE FOR WOVEN-FABRIC COMPOSITE STRUCTURES

L. Dong1 and J. Blachut2

1School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, The University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH, UK.
2Mechanical Engineering, The University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3GH, UK.

Summary The paper describes behaviour of torispherical shells, made from multi-ply and non-cut draped woven carbon fabric, subjected to uniform external pressure. The fishnet algorithm was used for simulation of woven fabric drape on doubly curved surfaces. The resulting local fibre orientation and variable wall thickness were used in the subsequent computations. The progressive failure anlysis was carried out using finite element method in which the interactive Tsai-Wu stress failure criterion with a stiffness reduction scheme was adopted. The effect of inter-laminar shear strength on the collapse load is included. The effect of unsymmetrically draped fabric on the failure load of domes is also investigated. Details are provided about the experimental work, in which 10 carbon fibre domes with up to 56 plies were manufactured and collapsed by external pressure in the range between 7 MPa and 29 MPa.
Keywords progressive failure, draping, computational modelling, woven fabric, external pressure, collapse, torispheres.

Theme : Textiles ; Design and Processing

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