Volume 15, Issue 1, 2006

INVESTIGATION OF THE FREE EDGE INTERLAMINAR STRESSES DEPENDENCE ON THE PLY THICKNESS AND ORIENTATION

Dionisios T. G. Katerelos
Technological Educational Institute of Mesologgi, Department of Agricultural Mechanics and Water Resources, Mesologgi, GR-302 00, Greece, E-mail: katerel@iceht.forth.gr, tel.:+30 261 0 993468, fax.:+30 261 0 965 223

(Received 3/06; accepted 5/06)

ABSTRACT

Among the principal damage modes in composite laminates, is delamination. Design details, such as free, straight or curved, edges, induce large local out-of-plane loads, generating interlaminar stresses. In the present work, the effect of ply thickness and the angle between two adjacent layers on the interlaminar stresses developed at the vicinity of straight and curved free edges in composite laminates under thermomechanical loading is examined. The results are obtained by the application of a 3-dimensional Finite Element Analysis.