Deformation and failure behavior of hybrid composite laminates made of Glass Epoxy and woven Kevlar Epoxy

Abstract

Due to the demand of reducing costs for high strength materials, hybridizing composite laminates could offer the alternative in producing materials with superior properties at reduced costs. Moreover, preparing samples and conducting experiments for these materials are very costly and tedious. Therefore, in order to establish the complex failure behavior of hybrid composite laminates, finite element analysis and simulation has been the choice for failure prediction. Accepting, this challenge, this paper investigates the deformation and failure behavior of composite plates made of woven Kevlar Epoxy (KE), unidirectional Glass Epoxy (GE), and their hybrids (KE/GE) under uniaxial tension. Solid plates and plates with circular hole were modeled using commercial finite element software, ANSYS APDL. In general, all laminates having the layup of [θ4/04/-θ4]s but the hybrid laminate arrangement varies between the number of GE and woven KE laminates. Using the built-in failure criteria function provided by ANSYS APDL, the first ply failure (FPF) and last ply failure (LPF) loads for several configuration of hybrid laminates were determined. In addition, the angle of fiber orientation, θ, was varied from 0° to 90° to generate the trend of failure curves. The results show that the FPF and LPF curves for the plates with hole are lower compared to the solid plate. Nevertheless, the patterns of the failure curves are very much influenced by the angle of fiber orientation. This indicates that the fiber angles have a significant effect on the strength of hybrid composite laminates. Compared to GE and woven KE composite laminates, the hybridization between unidirectional lamina and woven lamina could also influence the pattern of the failure curves. It could be concluded that the current study is useful; and has provided knowledge about the failure and deformation behavior of hybrid composite laminates by combining unidirectional (GE) and woven (KE) laminates.