ABSTRACT
The design of a laminated composite structure, such as a flat floor panel or a pressure vessel, starts with the building block of laminae, in which fiber and matrix are combined in a manufacturing process such as filament winding or prepregs. The material of the fiber and matrix, processing factors such as packing arrangements, and fiber volume fraction determine the stiffness, strength, and hygrothermal response of a single lamina. These properties can be found by using the properties of the individual constituents of the lamina or by experiments, as explained in Chapter 3. Then the laminate can have variations in material systems and in stacking sequence of plies to tailor a composite for a particular application.
