Experimental Investigation and Numerical Analysis of the In-Plane Tensile Behavior of a Triaxially Braided Composite with Subcell Modeling Approach
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 31, Issue 5
Abstract
To improve the prediction of the response of braided composite structures, a subcell approach is under development. This method has shown successes in predicting the moduli of braided composites. To examine its capability in strength prediction, a combined experimental and analytical study has been conducted for a braided composite. This includes experimental investigations of the tensile stress-strain behavior of the composite at five off-axis angles of 0, 30, 45, 60, and 90°, and numerical simulations of the experiments using the subcell approach. It was observed that the measured tensile strength, damage, and failure modes varied significantly with the off-axis angle. The subcell modeling approach was successful in predicting both the strength and failure mode for the 0, 30, and 60° coupons but overpredicted the strength for the 90° coupons, where a strong free edge effect on damage initiation and failure was seen in the experiment. The results show that, in the absence of local free edge effects, the subcell approach is promising as a viable and computationally efficient method for the modeling of triaxially braided composite structures.
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Acknowledgments
The first and fourth authors gratefully acknowledge the support of NASA Glenn Research Center through Grant No. NNX12AL14A.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 31 • Issue 5 • September 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 24, 2016
Accepted: Jan 30, 2018
Published online: May 28, 2018
Published in print: Sep 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Oct 28, 2018
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