COMPOSITE MATERIALS

LESSON 9: LAMINATE THEORY

Introduction
Practical structures made of composite materials have fibers placed in more than one direction. Because most composites, for example, those with polymeric matrices, are extremely weak in directions transverse to the fibers, fibers must be placed in more than one direction. Otherwise, even secondary loads in transverse directions could cause failure of the structure. The proper selection of the placement angles of the different layers of fibers is a key feature in the design of composite structures. The foundation for the analysis techniques necessary to accomplish this design are explained in this lesson. The situation with composite materials is somewhat similar to that with reinforced concrete, in that even if the overall loads are simple, such as a uniaxial load, for example, the internal stress distribution is not uniform. Rather the individual plies carry the load according to their relative stiffnesses. The situation is complicated in fiber composites, because the stiffnesses of the individual plies depend on the angles of fiber placement with respect to the loads. The material developed in this chapter has direct application to the case in which the final composite form has distinct layers, such as the layers of a prepreg laminate or a filament- wound structure. However, other material forms, such as the various textile forms (e.g., cloth or braids), can often be analyzed using similar techniques. Thus, the material to be developed here is applicable when the material has fibers aligned within a layer. Materials such as random chopped-fiber or random mat composites have much less directionality to the various layers, and can be analyzed as if they were isotropic. This chapter proceeds in what perhaps seems to be a roundabout way. The basic geometry to be considered is that of a flat plate under both tension (or compression) and bending, and the basic problem is to relate the applied in-plane loads and bending moments to the stresses within the individual layers. Subsequent chapters show how to apply the procedures developed here to other structural geometries. The basic approach is to first describe the geometry characterizing extension and bending of a flat plate. Strain distributions are then obtained, and stresses related to these strains by means of the stress-strain laws. Integration of the stresses gives the extension forces and bending moments as a function of the strains. Finally, these extension forces and bending moments re related back to the stresses in the individual plies. In the usual (simplest) theory, which is now described, the Kirchhoff-Love hypothesis is invoked by assuming that normals to the centerline remain normal after deformation. This assumption neglects through-the-thickness shear deformation. Further discussion of shear deformation is given subsequently. The displacements in the x,z plane that characterize uniform extension are illustrated in Figure, along with those that characterize bending. A similar situation will exist in the y,z plane for displacements in that direction. The displacements in the x, y, and z directions are called u, v, and w, respectively, and are assumed to be described by continuous functions of x, y, and z. It is assumed that the plate displaces in the z direction only because of the bending motion, and that no variation of w through the thickness takes place. This is a usual assumption of thin-plate (and beam) analysis. As illustrated in the figure, the in-plane displacements u and v can be related to the centerline displacements Uo and Vo and the slopes by

Deformation Due to Extension and Bending

Consider a flat plate made up of a number of individual layers with an x,y coordinate system n the plane of the plate. The basic assumption is that the individual layers are perfectly bonded together, so that in terms of displacements, it is not necessary at this point to consider the individual layers, as they all displace together under the action of the applied loads.
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Figure : Illustration of extension and bending-plate deformation The displacements can then be used to relate to the strains by using the usual strain displacement relationships of linear elasticity. These relationships are developed in most texts on mechanics of materials or elasticity, and can be easily obtained from Figure by using the usual definitions for strain, that is, that normal strain is the change in length per unit length, and that engineering shear strain is the change in the

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angle between two initially perpendicular sides. These ideas can be written mathematically from the deformations shown in Fig.

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Force and Moment Resultants

Figure : The relationship between strains and displacement gradients: (a) normal strains and (b) shear strains The next step in the development is to relate the internal stresses (in overall x,y coordinates) to the applied loading, expressed in terms of stress resultants {N} and moment resultants {M}. The term stress resultant refers to the stress integrated over the thickness of the laminate, and is thus the applied force per unit width. A similar interpretation can be given to the moment resultant, which is thus the applied moment per unit width. Using equilibrium, we equate the force and moment per unit width to the integral of the stress and stress times distance from the center lint to get, for example,

for normal strain, and the relationship

A similar relationship holds for normal strain in the y direction, so that the strain displacement relations needed are given by

or in compact form,

and for the moment resultants, Substituting the displacements gives

where the integral is taken over the total laminate thickness by summing the integrals over each ply. That is, we take the integrals to be

and

Figure : Notation for location of ply interfaces. Note that the hk have the value of z and are negative below the centerline

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and

where the positions of the limits for each ply are illustrated in Figure Coordinates h k are the values of z at the interfaces and they have the sign convention of the z coordinate. Note that the integral of a matrix is just the integral of each term in the matrix.

By using these integrals, the equations can be written in the classic relation between stress resultants, moment resultants, centerline strains, and curvatures in the following form:

A,B and D Matrices

The force and moment resultants can be related to the strains in the laminate through the material properties for each ply group. This relationship can be expressed in terms of matrices that are labeled A, B, and D by custom. These matrices are developed in what follows. The first task in the development is to relate the stresses in each ply to the strains in the ply. The strains are given in terms of position z. This relationship between stresses and strains must be expressed in terms of the overall x, y coordinate system, because the strains are given in terms of x, y coordinates. However, this can be done using the stress strain relationships for a layer oriented at an arbitrary angle that were developed in Eqs.

where the A, B, and D matrices are each 3-by-3 matrices defined as

where

where the positions of the ply surfaces are denoted by h k, N is the number of plies (or groups of plies), and the Q matrix is the stiffness in the x, y coordinate system of each ply. In the general there is a coupling between the in plane behavior and the bending behavior because of the presence of the B matrix. This coupling leads to effects that are not present in isotropic materials; they are discussed in more detail subsequently. It will also be shown that the B matrix vanishes for symmetric laminates, that is, laminates that are symmetric with respect to the midplane. When the B matrix vanishes, the coupling between in-plane behavior and the bending behavior does not occur. For this case, Eq. reduces to

Substituting the stress-strain relationship in x,y coordinates into the preceding equations gives

and The preceding relationships between the stress and moment resultants and the centerline strains and curvatures are wel1known, and are the heart of laminate analysis. Because a laminate is often made up of a number of ply groups, a certain amount of bookkeeping is involved in calculating the A, B, and D matrices. However, this can be readily implemented on a desktop computer, either in a special program or in a spreadsheet.

The integrals are easy to carry out, because the material properties are constant over each individual ply (or ply group) and the only variable is z. Thus, for example,

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It can be seen that the A matrix is the sum of the moduli for each layer in the overall coordinate system multiplied by the thickness of that layer. Thus, the A matrix divided by the total laminate thickness represents an average in-plane stress-strain relationship for the laminate, expressed as

It will be shown in later chapter~ that the average stress-strain properties for a laminate can be useful in a number ofcalculations. The notation used in the A matrix, that of calling the term in the first row and third column A16rather than A13 should be noted. The rationale for this is that these matrices involved integrals of the Q stress-strain matrix, and it is customary to identify the position relative to the full three-dimensional stress-strain matrix with a size of 6 by 6, before it is reduced to the 3-by-3 matrix for plane stress. Although perhaps confusing, this notation seems well established in the composites literature. Similar notation is used for the D-matrix terms. The inverses of the previous matrix equations are required for a number of purposes, including calculating the stresses within the various plies of the laminate. In the general the entire 6-by-6 ABD matrix must be inverted to get

90/90/-45/45/0] layup. Another convention is that of repeated groups of plies, such as [(0/-60/60)2] 5 which is equivalent to [0/-60/60/0/-60/60] 5 Another convention is that of an overbar on a ply designation adjacent to the symmetry axis, which means a half ply, for example, [0/90] 5 means [0/90/0]. The symbol T is sometimes added for clarity to show that the total stack is indicated. For example, [010] T means 10 plies of 0 orientation. A hybrid laminate contains more than one material, such as mixing glass fiber plies and carbon fiber plies. In this case, the notation must also identify the material, usually by using a material designation as a subscript for the ply group. Manufacturing techniques other than prepreg layup do not have layers composed of a discrete number of plies. For example, in filament winding, the material is applied in layers of fibers with a common angle, but the thickness of each layer depends on the processing variables. Here the amount of fiber is identified by the thickness of the layer, given as a subscript. Example Calculation of A and D matrices for a unidirectional laminate As a first example, consider the calculation of the A and D matrices for a unidirectional laminate with 10 plies of AS4/ 3501-6 carbon epoxy. The layup is thus designated as [010] Because the laminate is symmetric about its midplane, that is, it could equally well be designated as a [05] s . laminate, all terms of the B matrix are identically zero. The stress-strain matrix for this material is calculated. Because the orientation of the plies coincides with the overall x,y coordinate system, the coordinatetransformation matrix is just the unit matrix, so that the properties are unchanged and noting that the sum is over the single ply group, gives

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The inverse of the ABD matrix is sometimes called the A *B*D* matrix; in this text it is called the F matrix to simplify notation. Thus,

For symmetric laminates, which thus have a zero B matrix, the two 3-by-3 matrices can be inverted to get the following: If

then

and

and

Laminate Code
Before discussion of particular laminates, it is convenient to explore a shorthand code used to specify the layup. Laminates are specified by the plies or ply groups that constitute the layup. Some examples will illustrate the procedure. A laminate consisting of a series of layers (made up of individual plies in a prepreg laminate) of one material in unidirectional form can be specified by the angles and numbers of plies in each ply group, such as [02/90/90/02], where the subscript refers to the number of plies in the ply group. A [0/45/-45/90] 5 laminate is symmetric about the midplane, and is thus equivalent to a [0/45/-45/ Where t is the total laminate thickness. It is easy to see that for this case, the A matrix is just the stress-strain matrix multiplied by the total thickness. The D matrix represents the bending stiffness properties, and, noting that it is defined on a per unit width basis, can be seen to be a two-dimensional version of the familiar EI stiffness of beam theory for a unit width beam.

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