THE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT WINDING CONFIGURATIONS ON THE CRUSHING RESPONSE OF HELICAL WOUND WOVEN GLASS/EPOXY COMPOSITE TUBES

The crushing behavior of polymer matrix composite tubes depends on several factors, such as diameter, fiber orientation, wall thickness, and winding configuration. The current work aims at understanding the effect of winding configuration with different helical overlap portions (none, quarter, and half) and the number of layers on the crushing response of woven glass/epoxy composite tubes subjected to quasi-static compression and impact loading. The length-to-diameter ratio is kept constant, for all the cases of the specimen considered. Crashworthiness parameters, such as mean crushing load, initial peak load, specific energy absorption, and crush load efficiency are compared for different cases. Damage and failure characteristics of different helical wound composite specimens are examined and compared with straight wound composite tubes made with a winding angle of 0 degrees. The study shows that the energy absorption capacity of helical wound specimens increases in almost the same proportion as the helical overlap portion increases from no overlap to half overlap. Also, experimental results for composite tubes having different helical overlap portions suggest that the helical overlap portion can be an important parameter in achieving tailor-made energy absorption properties with inbuilt triggering features.