Design and Analysis of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composite Shell Structure Using Classical Laminate Plate Theory

Abstract

The main focus of this project is to understand the nature of these laminated composites when subjected to specific damage cases like loads. In order to understand the progression of the failure modes in a laminated composite, models were designed and analyzed using ANSYS 14.5. In this work composite cylinder is designed which can withstand an external pressure of 5 bar. Stress analysis of the structure is done using classical laminate theory theoretically and the result obtained is validated using finite element analysis procedure using ANSYS and the error is very less. The behavior of the composite cylinder is checked by exploring the stresses and strains. The present work includes determination of optimum design parameters like fiber orientation. Finally, utilizing the finite element modeling of a cylindrical shell specimen, a relative comparison is made between the results of the finite element and the analytical method. The results thus obtained were found to be in good agreement in terms of damage size. To check the health of the composite cylindrical shell, failure criteria’s like Tsai-wu and Maximum stress criteria were also calculated in this paper.