ABSTRACT

The advent of continuous glass fibers brought a new dimension to the practice of filament winding. Another strong contributing factor to the success of the filament winding technology was the development of liquid thermosetting resins, such as polyester and epoxy. There are two types of patterns normally used in filament winding: helical winding, in which a constant angle is maintained, and biaxial winding, where two or more separate winding angles are used. Helical winding is more common because the processing time is ordinarily less biaxial patterns enable special properties to be obtained and, for closed end structures, have a processing time advantage. The molding compound is formed by helically winding continuous strands onto a cylindrical mandrel to a predetermined thickness. The netting analysis assumes that there is no contribution from the matrix portion of the composite structure and that all fibers are tensioned equally.