Abstract:
Composites are widely used in aerospace industry because of their outstanding advantages, such as high specific modulus, high specific strength and long fatigue life. However, composite often encounters wrinkle defects in the manufacturing process. The existence of wrinkle defects has negative impacts on the stiffness and strength of composite laminates. The mechanical properties of composites with wrinkle of single and double fiber-waviness were studied in this paper. Analytical and numerical methods were used to calculate the effective material properties of single and double fiber-waviness wrinkle with micro-mechanical models. Through the comparison and analyses of the prediction results from micro-mechanical models, it is shown that when the absolute value of waviness ratio increases, the effective modulus of the laminate with wrinkle decreases. When the absolute value of waviness ratio is the same, the effective modulus of the laminate with concave wrinkle is lower than that with convex wrinkle. There is an intersection point among the effective modulus curves obtained from wrinkled laminates with different thicknesses. The variation of effective modulus associated with laminates thickness is opposite on the two sides of intersection point. The intersection point of wrinkle with double fiber-waviness is different from that of single fiber-waviness.