Experimental-Numerical Analysis of Woven Laminates under Tension

Woven composite laminates are rapidly replacing unidirectional composite laminates in terms of structural application. Nevertheless, the deformation theory for woven laminate has not been well established compared to unidirectional laminate. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the deformation behavior of woven laminates under uniaxial tension using both the experimental and numerical approaches. The tensile tests were conducted initially according to ASTM D3039 on samples made of 2×2 twill weave carbon fiber prepeg in order to attain the material constants (E1, E2, G12 and ʋ12) and the deformation behavior from the stress-strain curve. This is important as the material parameters and values should be input correctly to ensure an accurate numerical analysis. The second stage involves the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) using ANSYS and analytical analysis using MATLAB. The results of extension for both numerical approaches have been compared with reference to the experimental results. The results show that the error is less than 30%. The failure analysis also has been performed to determine mode of failure using ANSYS and MATLAB by employing Maximum Stress failure criterion. The displacements during First Ply Failure (FPF) and Last Ply Failure (LPF) between ANSYS and MATLAB showed good correlation where the percentage difference is less than 1%. Therefore, it can be concluded that the current implemented procedure for unidirectional laminates could be a noble alternative approach to simulate woven laminates under tension accurately.