Mechanical behavior of laminated composites with circular holes

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical method for the evaluation of the stress concentration factor (SCF) in three dimensional laminated composites under mechanical loads. The proposed method uses the finite element formulation. The composites materials based on the epoxy matrix and reinforcing fibers are extensively used in aircraft structures due to their high specific characteristics. However, the withstanding of composite structures can be significantly reduced by the addition of geometric singularities, such as perforations or notches. To Analyses the stress concentration around geometrical notches, several studies as analytical, numerical and experimental techniques are available. The stress distribution in a laminated composite plate with the presence of a circular hole was investigated using the finite element method. In order, the results obtained by this study are compared with those reported in literature. The aim of this analysis is to evaluate numerically the factor of stress concentration under the influence of several parameters such as fibers orientation, the mechanical characteristics of composites and the distance between notches of cross-laminated.