A. T. Rhead¹, T. J. Dodwell¹, R. Butler^1,2

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.35, No.1, pp. 1-16, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2013.035.001

Abstract When (robotic) Automated Fibre Placement (AFP) is used to manufacture aerospace components with complex three dimensional geometries, gaps between fibre tows can occur. This paper explores the interaction under compressive load of these tow gaps with impact damage. Two coupons with different distributions of tow-gaps were impacted. Results indicated that the area of delamination is smaller for an impact directly over a tow gap where the tow gap is situated close to the non-impact face. Subsequent Compression After Impact (CAI) testing demonstrated that both the formation of sublaminate buckles and subsequent growth of delaminations is inhibited by the presence of… More >

A.M. Waas

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.34, No.3, 2013, DOI:empty

Abstract Fiber reinforced composites (FRCs) are fast becoming the material of choice in a wide range of applications where lightweight and high performance are critical. The deformation response, damage onset and failure of pre-preg based FRCs, textile FRCs and nanocomposites (where filler is reinforced with particles of dimensions in the nanometer scale) are now contemporary fields of research and there is wide variety of experimental, analytical and computational advances that have recently emerged. In this special issue of the CMC journal, leading experts in the mechanics of composites have contributed 14 papers devoted to addressing the deformation response, damage onset and… More >

Jia-Liang Le¹, Bing Xue¹

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.34, No.3, pp. 251-264, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2013.034.251

Abstract It has been recently shown that the nominal structural strength of metal-composite structures depends on the structure size, and such dependence is strongly influenced by the stress singularities. Nevertheless, previous studies only focused on structures that exhibit very strong stress singularities, which are close to the crack-like stress singularity. In the actual engineering designs, due to the mismatch of material properties and complex structural geometries, many metalcomposite structures may contain stress singularities that are much weaker than the crack-like stress singularity. This paper presents a numerical study on the size dependence of scaling of fracture of metal-composite hybrid structures for… More >

Chandra Veer Singh^1,*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.34, No.3, pp. 227-249, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2013.034.227

Abstract A non-linear damage model is developed for the prediction of stiffness degradation in composite laminates due to transverse matrix cracking. The model follows the framework of a recently developed synergistic damage mechanics (SDM) approach which combines the strengths of micro-damage mechanics and continuum damage mechanics (CDM) through the so-called constraint parameters. A common limitation of the current CDM and SDM models has been the tendency to over-predict stiffness changes at high crack densities due to linearity inherent in their stiffness-damage relationships. The present paper extends this SDM approach by including higher order damage terms in the characterization of ply cracking… More >

A. Ataş¹, C. Soutis²

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.34, No.3, pp. 199-226, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2013.034.199

Abstract A strength prediction method is presented for double-lap single fastener bolted joints of cross-ply carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) composite laminates using cohesive zone elements (CZEs). Three-dimensional finite element models were developed and CZEs were inserted into subcritical damage planes identified from X-ray radiographs. The method makes a compromise between the experimental correlation factors (dependant on lay-up, stacking sequence and joint geometry) and three material properties (fracture energy, interlaminar strength and nonlinear shear stress-strain response). Strength of the joints was determined from the predicted load-displacement curves considering sub-laminate and plylevel scaling effects. The predictions are in a reasonable agreement with… More >

V. Filonova¹, Y. Liu¹, M. Bailakanavar¹, J. Fish¹, Z. Yuan²

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.34, No.3, pp. 177-198, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2013.034.177

Abstract A corotational formulation for reduced order homogenization is presented. While in principle the proposed method is valid for problems with arbitrary large strains, it is computational advantageous over the classical direct computational homogenization method for large rotations but moderate unit cell distortions. We validate the method for several large deformation problems including: (i) hat-section composite beam with two-dimensional chopped tow composite architecture, (ii) polyethylene microstructure consisting of 'hard' and 'soft' domains (segments), and (iii) fiber framework called fiberform either embedded or not in an amorphous matrix. More >

Chih-Wen Chang^1,2, Chein-Shan Liu³

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.34, No.2, pp. 143-175, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2013.034.143

Abstract The nonlinear Poisson problems in heat diffusion governed by elliptic type partial differential equations are solved by a modified globally optimal iterative algorithm (MGOIA). The MGOIA is a purely iterative method for searching the solution vector x without using the invert of the Jacobian matrix D. Moreover, we reveal the weighting parameter αc in the best descent vector w = αcE + DTE and derive the convergence rate and find a criterion of the parameter γ. When utilizing αc and γ, we can further accelerate the convergence speed several times. Several numerical experiments are carefully discussed and validated the proposed… More >

Shiv Narayan¹, Latha S.¹, R M Jha¹

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.34, No.2, pp. 131-142, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2013.034.131

Abstract The EM performance analysis of a multilayered metamaterial based radar absorbing structure (RAS) has been presented in this paper based on transmission line transfer matrix (TLTM) method for millimeter wave applications. The proposed metamaterial-RAS consists of cascaded DPS and MNG layers of identical configurations. It exhibits extremely low reflection (< 42 dB) at 95 GHz and absorbs more than 95% power of incident wave over the frequency range of 90.4- 100 GHz without metal backing for both TE and TM polarizations. In view of aerospace applications, the reflection, transmission, and absorption characteristics of the proposed metamaterial-RAS are also studied at… More >

Jiaojiao Du¹, Guojian Li¹, Qiang Wang^1,2, Yongze Cao¹, Jicheng He¹, Yonghui Ma¹

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.34, No.2, pp. 117-129, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2013.034.117

Abstract The effects of high magnetic field and post-annealing on the structural, electrical and magnetic properties of the evaporated Ni films were investigated and compared. The in-situ application of a 6 T magnetic field during evaporation or post-annealing at 200°C did not change the crystal structures of the films. However, the magnetic field makes the films exhibit the smallest grain size and the lowest surface roughness. Crystallinity was improved for both the 6 T films and the annealed films. This leads to the enhancement of saturation magnetization (Ms). The value of Ms for the 0 T films was 588 emu/cm3, while… More >

Yi Xiao¹, Qing H. Qin¹

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.34, No.2, pp. 95-115, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2013.034.095

Abstract In this paper, we propose a new approach of optical full-field measurement for displacement calculation on the surface of a cellular solid. Cell boundary points are sampled as nodes in the analysis. To find the nodal values of displacements the nodes are to be mapped onto their corresponding points in the deformed cell boundary by shape based point matching. A thin plate spline based robust point matching (TPS-RPM) approach is used instead of correlation of intensity pattern between two regions in traditional displacement measurement methods. The proposed approach involves multiple-step image processing including cell region segmentation, cell region matching and… More >