Mechanical property distribution of CFRP filament wound composites

The extending use of composite materials and the simultaneous need for reliability-based design of structural components has introduced the stochastic modelling of material properties, as implied by several design codes and standards. Therefore, for using such materials in advanced applications, the stochastic character of their properties needs to be taken into account. In this work the statistical aspects of strength and elastic properties of carbon/epoxy (C/Ep) filament wound composites are determined through a series of static tensile and compressive tests. Six candidate statistical distributions were used in order to model the strength and elastic properties of the composite, but none of them was proved to be a better fit to the experimental results, as revealed by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Therefore, anyone of them can be used equally well to model mechanical property distributions. Although not expected, the experimental investigation revealed considerable scattering on the elasticities, besides strength, indicating that the variation of the elastic properties should be implemented in an adequate reliability analysis. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.