THE FLOW OF CONTINUOUS FIBER-REINFORCED COMPOSITES IN STEADY SHEAR

A theoretical study is made of the flow that occurs in a continuous fi bre-reinforced laminate subject to steady shearing caused by the withd rawal of a rigid plate from within the laminate. The laminate is assum ed to be a stack of resin-rich layers and plies with the resin-rich la yers modelled as Newtonian liquids and the plies as inextensible fibre -reinforced liquids; the viscosities in the ply and resin layers can d iffer from layer to layer as can the fibre orientation in each of the plies. The number and thickness of the layers on either side of the pu ll-out plate can also be varied. Velocity distributions parallel to an d perpendicular to the pull-out direction are presented. In certain ca ses the velocity perpendicular to the pull-out direction takes both po sitive and negative values within a ply.