Design of buckling and damage resistant steered fibre composite laminates using trellis shear kinematics

Xiao, Z. and Harrison, P. (2021) Design of buckling and damage resistant steered fibre composite laminates using trellis shear kinematics. Composite Structures, 260, 113526. (doi: 10.1016/j.compstruct.2020.113526)

Abstract

A Matlab®-based numerical tool, ‘SteerFab’, is developed to predict steered fibre patterns and to analyse the mechanical properties of the resulting variable stiffness panels using the finite element software, Abaqus™. Based on trellis shear kinematics [1], both the steered fibre pattern and the shape of the corresponding initial undeformed sheet can be created by SteerFab. Two types of rectangular plates measuring 300 mm × 400 mm are considered in this numerical study, one with and one without a 90 mm diameter central hole. For the plate with a hole, the finite element analysis predicts that the optimised steered-fibre pattern achieves similar improvements for both a carbon-epoxy composite (~6%) and a glass–epoxy composite (~7%) in terms of buckling resistance load, while failure load is increased by about 5% for a carbon-epoxy composite and 10% for a glass–epoxy composite compared to the best performing equivalent straight-fibre laminates.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Harrison, Dr Philip and Xiao, Dr Zhaofei

Creator Roles

Xiao, Z.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Visualization
Harrison, P.: Conceptualization, Software, Resources, Writing – review and editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition

• Authors: Xiao, Z., and Harrison, P.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Systems Power and Energy
• Journal Name: Composite Structures
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0263-8223
• ISSN (Online): 1879-1085
• Published Online: 29 December 2020
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd
• First Published: First published in Composite Structures 260: 113526
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
300181		2-D Forming of Low-Cost Steered-Fibre Laminates	Philip Harrison	Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)	EP/P021573/1	ENG - Systems Power & Energy