Estimation of compressive strength of delaminated composites

An analytical method is presented for the estimation of compressive strength of delaminated composites. In the present method, the analysis of the delaminated composite is divided into three components: stress analysis of the laminate prior to the buckling of the sublaminate: eigenvalue analysis of the sublaminate; obtaining the compressive strength of the delaminated composite from these results. Based on this analytical method, the effect of location and size of delamination on damage tolerance has been studied on two types of plain weave fabric composites. Experimental study has been carried out on a typical plain weave E-glass/epoxy laminate GLE-12 with an artificially introduced delamination. A good correlation is observed between the predicted and the experimental results. It is seen that T-300/5208 carbon/epoxy laminate WG02C is more damage tolerant than the E-glass/epoxy laminate GLE-12. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.