Extended Lamination Theory for Bridging Laminate Analysis to Composite Structures in Teaching Fundamentals of Composite Materials

Abstract

The senior/first year graduate level course on fundamentals of composites has been widely offered by most of universities in US. The course provides students with both the theory and applications of the fundamental principles of composite materials that used in structural design. Analysis of composite structures in laminate level has widely employed “Classical Laminated Plate Theory†in determining the ply stresses. However, analysis in structural level often employs either finite element method or non-FEM approach using equivalent property of laminate. Hence, teaching this ‘fundamentals of composites†course often contains up to analysis of the laminate level. This paper demonstrates the applicability of lamination theory usually for laminate level that can be extended to analysis of composite beam structural level with open- and closed- sections, such as I-beam and circular and n-side polygonal tubular structures. The expressions for sectional properties such as bending, torsional and warping stiffness as well as centroid and shear center are also included.