Stress Analysis of a Composite Material Shell Having a Crack
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Date
2008-12
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Composite materials are artificially made materials used in various mechanical applications like
shells and plates. A composite material cylindrical shell is one of the components used in weight
sensitive areas like aeronautics and marine environments. In these applications, the weight of the
components is much more related to cost and the mechanical properties of the structural material
are of great importance to hinder the damage that could result as a result of failure. On the other
hand, strength and stiffness are very important parameters to prevent the associated serious
failures. So, in order to prevent failure and save weight composite materials were evolved with
currently emerging technology. Composite materials are nowadays commonly used in the
aviation industry and marine applications in the form of vessels or shells.
In this work, what is targeted at is the carrying out the stress variation analysis of composite
material cylindrical shell. The analysis was performed by studying the properties of composites,
their areas of application, anisotropic elasticity relations, fracture mechanics approach for
composites, and finally finite element method application is applied to investigate the stress
distribution at the crack tip in the composite material shell.
Mathematical modeling and finite element simulation of the cracked shell was performed and the
problem was at the end solved using ANSYS finite element analysis package. Consequently,
results were obtained in the post processing stage of ANSYS. The main results obtained were the
mode of stress and strain variation, the profile of the cracked surface, and the localized critical
stress and strain regions at the crack front which could be cold shielded damaged zone.
Ultimately, the stress and strain variation, the crack propagation schemes were compared to
isotropic material shell to draw conclusion on the advantages of composites compared to
conventional materials with regard to crack advancement.
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Keywords
Composite materials, anisotropic stress-strain relationship, laminate, finite element model, crack simulation, classical shell theory