Bearing Behavior of Joints in Pultruded Composites

Abstract

Due to the increased use of pultruded composites for structural applications, understanding the bearing behavior of pultruded composites is important for effective structural designs. This paper reports on a comprehensive experimental and analytical study to characterize the influence of geometry and loading condition on the joint strength and failure mode in pultruded composites. The geometric parameters studied were specimen width, end distance, and hole diameter. The experimental study included compressive and tensile bearing tests. The results provide useful information for the structural design with such materials against joint failures. The experimental results for tensile failure load and failure mode are compared with predictions from the tensile, shear and (compressive) bearing strengths based on both average stress analysis and finite element method (FEM). The effect of hole size on the compressive bearing strength was analyzed and good correlation between predictions and test results was observed. The effect of further reinforcing the pultruded composites with a woven fabric was evaluated.