Understanding and predicting stiffness in advanced fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites for structural applications

Abstract

This chapter describes the elastic qualities of advanced fibre-reinforced composites, in terms of characterization, measurement and prediction from the basic constituents, i.e. the fibre and matrix. The elastic analysis comprises applying micromechanics approaches to predict the lamina elastic properties from the basic constituents, and using classical lamination theory to predict the elastic properties of composite materials composed of several laminae stacked at different orientations. Examples are given to illustrate the theoretical analysis and give a full apprehension of its prediction capability. The last section provides an overview on identification methods for elastic proprieties based on full-field measurements. It is shown that these methodologies are very convenient for elastic characterization of anisotropic and heterogeneous materials.