ABSTRACT
Laminated fibre composites are widely used in different branches of industry because of their high strength and stiffness-to-weight ratios. During the fabrication and use of such laminates, the earliest damaging phenomenon that occurs is the formation of transverse cracks parallel to the fibre direction. At later stages, transverse cracks lead to delamination, fibre fractures and whole laminate bearing facilities degradation. Experimental studies of the transverse cracking effect on thermo-elastic properties of cross-ply laminates show (see [1] and [2]) that in laminates with very similar elastic properties of the constituents (unidirectional plies) the reduction of elastic properties (Poisson’s ratio) during cracking may be very different. In the present study different analytic and numerical micromechanical method predictions are compared with experimental data for [0m, 90n]S cross-ply and angle-ply laminates.
