Volume 8, Issue 5, 1999

Improved Inherent Flaw Model For Tensile Fracture Of Cracked Composite Laminates

P.K.Govindan Potti and B.Nageswara Rao*

Structural Engineering Group, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre,Trivandrum-695022, India.

V.K.Srivastava

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi-221005, India.

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed

ABSTRACT

Modifications are made in the inherent flaw model to predict the tensile fracture strength of cracked composite laminates. A simple relation is used for the inherent flaw length to improve the accuracy while evaluating the fracture strength of laminates. A quartic (fourth-order polynomial) equation is developed for the fracture strength of an infinite width plate containing a crack. This model is successfully applied to centre crack tensile specimens of graphite/epoxy and nylon/glass polyamide.

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