This paper presents a multilayered/multidirector and shear-deformable finite-element formulation of shells for the analysis of composite laminates. The displacement field is assumed continuous across the finiteelement layers through the composite thickness. The rotation field is, however, layerwise continuous and is assumed discontinuous across these layers. This kinematic hypothesis results in...

A study has been made of the fatigue-crack propagation properties of a series of laminated Nbreinforced Nb3Al intermetallic-matrix composites with varying microstructural scale but nominally identical reinforcement volume fraction (20 pct Nb). It was found that resistance to fatigue-crack growth improved with increasing metallic layer thickness (in the range 50 to 250 mm) both in the crack-divi...

The purpose of this study is to review many of the available guidelines for Polymer composite materials. Guide lines for failure mode, laminates orientation, winding angle, water absorption, as they strongly influence the mechanical properties of composite materials. The present review is focused on composite laminates made of glass, carbon, graphite, hybrid and natural fiber composites, since ...

Purpose: Egypt has the highest prevalence of chronic Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections and also a high prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM). The high prevalence chronic hepatitis C has been attributed to HCV transmission by contaminated injections for the control of schistosomiasis. HCV infection has not been well studied in the context of female genital mutilation (FGM). We sought to...

Laminated Si/SiC ceramics were synthesized from porous preforms of biogenous carbon impregnated with Si slurry at a temperature of 1500 °C for 2 h. Due to the capillarity infiltration with Si, both intrinsic micro- and macrostructure in the carbon preform were retained within the final ceramics. The SEM micrographs indicate that the final material exhibits a distinguished laminar structure with...

BACKGROUND Female genital mutilation (FGM) usually undertaken between the ages of 1-9 years and is widely practised in some part of Africa and by migrants from African countries in other parts of the world. Laws prohibit FGM in almost every country. FGM can cause immediate complications (pain, bleeding and infection) and delayed complications (sexual, obstetric, psychological problems). Several...

Natural fibers are receiving considerable attention as substitutes for synthetic fiber reinforcements such as glass in polymer due to their low density, low cost, acceptable specific strength, reduced tool wear and respiratory irritation and renewable resources. The fibers are not uniformly distributed in the randomly oriented fiber reinforced hybrid composites due to manual lay-up and fibers a...

This paper is devoted to minimum stress design in structural optimization. The homogenization method is extended to such a framework and yields an efficient numerical algorithm for topology optimization. The main idea is to use a partial relaxation of the problem obtained by introducing special microstructures which are sequential laminated composites. Indeed, the so-called corrector terms of s...

North American composites including laminated veneer lumber, oriented strandboard, and medium density fiberboard were treated by vapor boron technology and subsequently tested in static bending. Tensile properties were also determined for the two composite boards. The study was designed as 3 x 2 factorial with three treatment levels and two mill locations for each composite type. In general, mi...