Design guidelines for ply drop-off in laminated composite structures

摘要

The present investigation aims at developing a few guidelines for the design of tapered laminated composites. The tapering in laminated composites is introduced by terminating (dropping-off) plies at different locations. The main objective in designing a drop-off is to reduce stress concentration. At present some thumb rules are used to design the drop-off. In this paper, guidelines have been developed by studying the effect of important parameters that determine the strength of the laminate. The numerical study shows that some of the thumb rules used at present are rather conservative and may be relaxed to an extent.