Residual stress and failure analyses of polymer matrix composites considering thermal cycling and temperature effects based on classical laminate plate theory

Abstract

The effects of temperature and thermal cycling on the residual stress and failure behavior of different polymer matrix composites have been investigated in this paper. A new algorithm within the framework of the classical laminate plate theory (CLPT) has been presented to calculate the residual stresses. The modified Tsai-Wu failure criterion has been employed to study the failure behavior of different stacking sequences. Numerical results show that the residual stress and failure index of the composites decrease with the increase of the temperature. It has also been established that thermal cycling condition leads to reduction of the residual stresses and increment of the failure index.