DefinePK

Abstract

Tapered laminated structures, which are formed by dropping off some of the plies at discrete positions over the laminate, have received much attention from researchers because of their structural tailoring capabilities, damage tolerance, and their potential for creating significant weight savings in engineering applications. The inherent weakness of this construction is the presence of material and geometric discontinuities at ply drop region that induce premature interlaminar failure at interfaces between dropped and continuous plies. In the present work the finite element analysis of composite laminates with externally and internally ply drop-off is presented. The effect of different lay-ups and different ply drop-off ratio Th/L (where Th is total thickness of ply drops and L is ply drop of length) under tensile load is study. The finite element analysis is carried out using ANSYS software.