Volume 11, Issue 5, 2002

An analytical model to predict fracture of off-axis unidirectional composites

J. Petermann1* , A. Plumtree2 and K. Schulte1

1 Polymers & Composites, Technical University Hamburg-Harburg, 21071 Hamburg, Germany  
2 Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, N2L 3G1, Canada

*(Author to whom correspondence should be addressed)

(Received 4/02; accepted 10/02)

Abstract

An analytical model based on isotropic homogeneous material behaviour is proposed to predict fracture in unidirectional composites under general loading. The model calculates the internal stress distribution corresponding to the applied load. In conjunction with the respective strength values, the model is capable of assessing the dominant stress component for failure initiation. For uniaxial tensile loading a comparison of calculated analytical stress distributions reasonably agrees with results from FE-analysis. A comparison of the analytical predictions with fractographic results for different off-axis angles provides good agreement.

Keywords: PMCs, Modelling, Fracture

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