Failure of non-conventional composite pipes - an experimental and numerical approach

This paper discusses an experimental and numerical study to investigate the failure behavior of innovative and newly designed non-conventional cross-sectional fiber reinforced composite pipes subjected to internal pressure and bending loads. An adaptive filament winder for nonconventional pipes is exclusively designed and built to fabricate the test samples used in this investigation. Experiments are conducted on triangular and rectangular cross-sectioned samples as per ASTM standards to find the internal burst pressure, bending strength, and failure modes of the pipes. Numerical analysis for the pipe loading process has been developed based on the finite element method for linear orthotropic conditions for composite pipes. The finite element analysis is used to build the model and predict the stresses imposed on the non-conventional pipes. The relationships between the applied internal pressure and peak circumferential stress, bending load, and bending strength with reference to the fillet radius are determined; and generally a good correlation is found between the experimental and numerical results. This study has extended the use of non-conventional composite pipes in structural applications.