Modelling of fibre steered plates with coupled thickness variation from overlapping continuous tows

Previous research has hinted on further improvements of the buckling behaviour of variable-stiffness laminates by incorporating overlaps, resulting in a variable thickness profile that is non-linearly coupled to the steering angles. The present study compares two modelling strategies to consider the variable thickness distribution: 1) as...

Overlap-stiffened panels for optimized buckling performance under minimum steering radius constraints

Recent research on variable stiffness laminates have shown both numerically and experimentally that further improvement on the buckling performance is possible by incorporating overlaps that result in variable thickness profiles. We present the concept of overlap-stiffened designs that take advantage of the non-linear coupling between the tow...

Buckling and free vibration study of variable and constant-stiffness cylindrical shells

The ability to steer carbon fibre tapes, varying the tow angle, can widen the designs possibilities of cylindrical shells that are one of the main components of aerospace structures. This research presents experimental and numerical investigation of two carbon fibre reinforced plastic cylindrical shells – a cylinder with conventional layup made...

ES-PIM applied to buckling of variable angle tow laminates

The increasing need for automatic mesh generation has led to the development of efficient triangulation algorithms that are able to discretize any 2D or 3D domain. Modern finite element formulations based on strain smoothing techniques (SFEM) provide enhanced convergence properties, preventing yet the stiffening behavior of triangular meshes....