23rd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 8-13 September, 2002, Toronto, Canada
Paper ICAS 2002-3.1.3

A LINEAR 3-D FINITE ELEMENT UNIT CELL MODEL FOR FIBRE WAVINESS IN COMPOSITE MATERIALS

A. J. Gunnion (1), M. L. Scott (1), R. S. Thomson (2), D. Hachenberg (3)
(1) RMIT University, Australia; (2) Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Composite Structures Limited, Fishermans Bend, Victoria 3207, Australia; (3)Airbus Deutschland GmbH, Germany

Keywords: fibre waviness, finite element, voxel, composite materials

The development of a simple unit cell model to investigate the mechanical properties of a through-thickness reinforced composite laminate is presented. The equivalent stiffness of the unit cell is evaluated using a voxel, finite element model. The results are shown to be equivalent or better than other techniques, at a quarter of the required elements, reducing time and resources required for analysis.

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