Abstract:
Composite materials are increasingly believed to be the materials of the future with potential for application in high performance structures. One of the reasons for that is the indication that composite materials have a rather good rating with regard to life time in fatigue. The present paper comprises theoretical and experimental research into the implementation of composite materials in structure applications. A finite element derivation was introduced based on Mindline theory to carry out stress analysis on different types of structures. Experimental measurements were carried out with two different types of composite materials, carbon/epoxy and glass/epoxy in order to obtain fatigue life diagrams (S/N diagrams) to be used for the fatigue damage assessment. Fatigue damage assessments were developed to predict the fatigue behavior of laminated structures based on damage by crack initiation under random load. A computer program was built based on the proposed finite element theory to carry out the previous analyses. The validation of the developed program for some analyses such as stress analysis and fatigue analysis was successfully achieved using a number of composite case studies.