Ultimate Strength And Reliability Assessment Of Laminated Composite Plates Under Axial Compression

The objective of this work is to investigate the ultimate strength and reliability of laminated composite plates under axial compression. A non-linear finite-element technique, including the multi-frame restart analysis, is developed to perform the progressive failure analysis. The Tsai-Wu criterion is adopted to identify the material failure of structures. The numerical accuracy is validated with results published in the literature. A benchmark study was then performed on a number of fibre-reinforced plates with various thicknesses and imperfections in order to investigate the process of progressive failure analysis and the influence of various sizes of geometrical imperfections on the compressive strength of composite plates. Finally, the finite-element method coupled with the response surface method is used for reliability assessment in order to treat the uncertainty of basic variables in a more realistic way.