PREDICTION OF FAILURE ENVELOPES OF COMPOSITE TUBES SUBJECTED TO BIAXIAL LOADINGS

Practical cylindrical structures including pressure vessels, pipes, dr ive shafts and rochet motors are usually subjected to complex loads in volving biaxial or triaxial stress systems. In particular, filamentary composite vessels are used in applications of Space Shuttle tankage, as well as for the storage of fluids in various commercial application s. The object of this work is to provide numerical and experiment data on the strength of filament wound carbon fibre reinforced epoxy resin thin tubes under biaxial loading conditions. Internal or external pre ssure and axial loads are applied simultaneously to produce a variety of biaxial stress conditions. The effects of the winding angle of the fibre reinforcements on the failure loads of the pipes have been exami ned. Finite elements and thin shell analysis have been applied to the problem using different failure criteria in order to predict the speci men's failure for a comparison with experimental results. (C) 1997 Els evier Science Ltd.