Chirped fibre Bragg grating (CFBG) sensors have been embedded within the adhesive bondline of single-lap bonded composite joints, fabricated using a transparent glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP) adherend bonded to a carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) adherend. During fatigue cycling, disbonds initiated adjacent to the cut ends of one, or both, of the adherends and the disbonds propagate...

Drilling is one of the important machining processes in hole making operations. Delamination is a vital problem during any drilling operation. It causes structural integrity reduction and poor assembly tolerance as well as potential for long-term performance deterioration. As a result, drilling of any material requires dimensional stability and interface quality. In this study, glass fibre rein...

The layer removal method is often used for measurement of internal stresses in homogeneous polymeric materials. In order to extend the use of this method to laminated composites certain refinements are needed. These include: (i) use of varying material properties (elastic moduli) through the thickness of the composite plate; (ii) use of geometric non-linear analysis to account for large deforma...

This study compared the initial and final failure loads and failure modes of indirect resin composite laminate veneers with and without fiber reinforcement. Forty intact lower canines received standard laminate preparations and were randomly assigned into four test groups (n=10). In Group 1, indirect resin composite veneers were repaired with two layers of preimpregnated bidirectional glass fib...

Many structures are often prone to bending loads, which can result in serious damage. Therefore, for structural integrity, structures must be efficient to resist bending. Flexural loading causes stresses in the composites, which vary through the thickness. These flexural stresses are the maximum at the outer surfaces and zero in the middle at the neutral axis. In pure bending, the composite fai...

Global energy sources such as coal and oil are limited, and the burning of such fossil resources creates pollution problems. Wind energy offers one of several promising clean alternatives to carbon-based fuels. However, the composite materials currently available for producing wind turbine blades cannot accommodate the scale-up of wind energy due to their high price and disposal challenges (e.g...

Two themes form the basis of this study on fibre reinforced laminated composites: namely 'thermal residual stress' and 'transverse cracking'. Thermal residual stresses are inherent to any composite structure and are internal stress within the structure that form during manufacture. Their formation arises from the difference in coefficient of thermal expansion of the fibre and the matrix. These ...

In this article, free vibration analysis of variable stiffness composite laminate (VSCL) plates with flat and folded shapes is studied. In order to consider the concept of variable stiffness, in each layer of these composite laminated plates, the curvilinear fibers are used instead of straight fibers. The analysis is based on a semi-analytical finite strip method which follows classical laminat...

Probabilistic edge-delamination strength of a thermosetting polymer composite was studied experimentally in this work. During the procedure, by means of edge-delamination tensile test, the graphite–fiber/epoxy laminate made of unidirectional Toray P7051S-20Q-1000 prepregs with an optimized lay-up of [122/–122/02]S was used for examining its probabilistic distributions of the edge-delamination o...

Thick composite laminates can be used in aerospace and automotive industry replacing metals for weight saving. Increasing the thickness can bring more defects, like voids. This master thesis focuses on the multi-scale voids prediction and their mechanical effect simulation of thick composite laminates manufacturing by Resin Transfer Molding (RTM). It could be potentially used in safe design of ...