A parametric study of stress concentration issues in unidirectional laminates

Abstract

This paper carries out a parametric analysis to evaluate the effect of circular holes on the strength of unidirectional laminae. Stroh Formalism is used to describe the elastic stresses around the border of circular holes in large plates subjected to in-plane loads and Puck failure criterion is applied to estimate the critical load. Finite plates are investigated using the Finite Element software ANSYS. Matrix failure is observed for most cases and the applied load on the damage onset is smaller than 10% of the unnotched strength and finite plate effect induces changes on the failure mechanism during damage propagation.

Keywords:

• Composite
• unidirectional laminate
• stress concentration
• notched strength
• failure