A bistable pure carbon fiber composite symmetric laminate and its preparation, modeling, and experimental verification

Abstract

A novel bistable symmetric laminate of pure carbon fiber composite is presented in this article. First, an analytical model was established based on the results of finite element analysis (FEA) using the segmented continuous displacement function. Then, the bistable pure carbon fiber composite symmetric laminate was prepared in the experiment. Both the analytical and FEA results are in considerable agreement with the experimental results. Finally, the effects of various laminate lengths, widths, ratios, thicknesses and materials were investigated. The results showed that the bistable pure carbon fiber composite symmetric laminate has larger deformation and lower snap-through load.