Electric current analysis for thick laminated CFRP composites

Abstract

This paper deals with a new lamination theory to calculate the electric current density on carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) laminates. Unidirectional CFRP has strong orthotropic electric conductance. When electric current is applied to the surface of a CFRP plate, the electric voltage field is not uniform in the thickness direction for thick CFRP. The electric current concentrates near the surface where the electric current is applied to thick CFRP laminates. In this study, a new lamination theory for thick CFRP laminates is proposed. The theory for thick CFRP assumes a non-uniform electric voltage distribution in the thickness direction. For non-thick and non-thin CFRP plates, an approximation method is proposed. To obtain the shape of the non-uniform voltage distribution, the analytical results of thick unidirectional ply from a previous paper is adopted as a contribution function to calculate the effective conductance of the thick CFRP laminate. Cross-sectional two-dimensional (2D) FEM analysis is used to obtain the contribution function for the nonthick CFRP plate. The proposed methods are applied to two cases of the thick CFRP plates, and the results are compared with the three-dimensional (3D) FEM results. Consequently, the new lamination theory is shown to be very effective for the CFRP plates. © 2012 The Japan Society for Aeronautical and Space Sciences.