Abstract:
Fiber waviness is a common defect in the manufacturing process of composite laminate, which can decrease the stiffness and strength of composite structures. Effectively predict the failure strength of composite laminate with fiber waviness will produce positive effect. In this paper, an analysis method for calculating the failure strength of composite laminate that contain sine or cosine curved fiber waviness was presented. The failure strength was predicted based on laminated theory and Infinitesimal method using the previous model. In addition, Tsai-Wu's failure criterion was employed to calculating the initial strength damage for carbon fiber/epoxy resin composite laminate with fiber waviness. Comparison of the result of damage calculation between the analytical solutions and FEM results proves the accuracy of the method. The method presented in this paper has some advantages over FEM, such as less computation, easy formulation and modeling, higher computational efficiency, and is easy to quickly analyze and determine the damage location and damage strength of composite laminates with fiber waviness.