High-resolution elastic analysis of thin-ply composite laminates

摘要

Several studies showed that thin-plies composite laminates apparently exhibit higher strength than its counterpart using thicker plies. In this work, a high-resolution numerical discretization based on the use of in-plane-out-of-plane separated representations within the Proper Generalized Decomposition PGD - framework is performed in different composites laminates for determining the effect of ply thickness on the laminate stiffness. The results reveal that the global stiffness increases with the ply thickness reduction. The analysis also reveals that this mechanical enhancement is due to structural effects and not to the mechanical confinement initially advanced. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.