The growing use of marine composite materials has led to many technical challenges and one is predicting lifetime durability. This analysis step has a large uncertainty due to the lack of data from in-service composite vessels. Analytical models based on classical lamination theory, finite-element analysis, ship motions, probability and wind and wave mechanics were used in this project to predi...

Exposing a laminate structure to thermal cycles and to temperatures close to the curing temperature, followed by mechanical fatigue, cause interlaminar and intralaminar cracks leading to degradation of the mechanical properties. The effect of thermal and mechanical fatigue, as well as thermal aging, on carbon fiber composite laminate structures is under study in the present paper.

Light is a readily available and sustainable energy source. Transduction of light into mechanical work or electricity in functional materials, composites, or systems has other potential advantages derived from the ability to remotely, spatially, and temporally control triggering by light. Toward this end, this work examines photoinduced piezoelectric (photopiezoelectric) effects in laminate com...

This study presents the status and results from an effort to design, fabricate, and test an adaptive jet engine chevron concept based upon embedding shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators in a composite laminate, termed a SMA hybrid composite (SMAHC). The approach for fabricating the adaptive SMAHC chevrons involves embedding prestrained Nitinol actuators on one side of the mid-plane of the composi...

Within the last decades many approaches have been proposed to perform source identification in fibre reinforced composites. Some of them have been validated using skilled micromechanical experiments or by using reference specimens in combination with imaging methods, leaving strong evidence that these approaches are valid tools to perform source identification tasks. Lately, also numerical meth...

This paper developed three-dimensional (3D) Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to investigate the effect of fibre lay-up on the initiation of failure of laminated composites in bending. TsaiHill failure criterion was applied to identify the critical areas of failure in composite laminates. In accordance with the 3D FEA, unidirectional ([0]16), cross-ply ([0/90]4s) and angle-ply ([±45]4s) laminates m...

Structural optimization using computational tools has become a major research field in recent years. The paper deals with a sizing optimization analysis of laminated circular cylindrical shell. For thin-walled shells, the classical shell theory is capable of accurately predicting the shell behavior. The weight minimization subjected to displacement constraint within the numerical optimization o...

The effect of fibre orientation on buckling behaviour in a rectangular composite laminate with central circular hole under uniform in-plane loading has been studied by using finite element method. The critical buckling loads with different fibre orientation in an orthotropic composite laminate (E-glass/epoxy) were obtained. The deformation behaviour of the plate is shown for modes, i=1,2. Studi...

Delamination is one of the most common defects in laminate composite materials. To detect delaminations, different non-destructive test methods such as infrared thermography methods are currently widespread for non-destructive inspection, recommended for evaluating composite materials mostly in the active variant. The principle behind infrared thermography consists in highlighting the relevant ...