An investigation on lateral buckling of laminated composites with delamination

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of delamination shapes and sizes on the lateral buckling behavior of the woven E-glass/epoxy laminated composite plates, experimentally and numerically. In order to perform experimental study, composite plates having eight laminates reinforced with woven E-glass fabric layers as [W]₈ are produced by using hand lay-up technique. For the delamination, basically two different delamination shapes, square and circular, are used. To investigate the effect of the delamination shape on the lateral buckling behavior, these delamination shapes are diversified. Six different rectangular delamination shapes are obtained by the changing aspect ratio of the horizontal and vertical edges of square delamination and in the same way six different elliptical delamination shapes are created by the changing aspect ratio of the horizontal and vertical diameter of the circular delamination. These aspect ratios are 0.50, 0.67, 0.75, 1.33, 1.67 and 2.00. To better understanding the effect of delamination on the lateral buckling behavior, the experimental and numerical results of the specimens with and without delamination are compared. The experimental results have good agreement with numerical results and these results show that the delamination shapes and sizes affected the critical lateral buckling load.