21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-4.8.1

STRENGTH PREDICTION OF 2-D BRAIDED CARBON/EPOXY COMPOSITES

Falzon P. J. Herszberg I.*
Coop. Research Cent. For Advanced Composite Structures Ltd., Melbourne, Australia; *RMIT, Australia

Keywords: strength, prediction, 2-d braided, carbon / epoxy, composites

Based on failure mechanisms identified from tests performed on 2-D braided composites, elementary type models which predict the strength of these materials were proposed in this paper. The formulation and numerical results generated from these models are presented. The predictions were compared with experimental data in order to validate the models. In most cases, the tension strength predictions were within 5% of measured values. The compression strength was found to be 'more difficult to predict with discrepancies typically under 20%. Parametric studies using the models were also performed to investigate the influence of braid angle and crimp angle on strength. It was found that the tension and compression strengths decrease with increasing braid angle. The tension strength was not influenced by the crimp angle to the same degree, while the compression strength was found to be very sensitive to the crimp angle.

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