DAMAGE TOLERANCE OF LAMINATED TEE JOINTS IN FRP STRUCTURES

This paper is concerned with the damage tolerance of laminated tee con nections in large fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) structures found in m arine construction. Such connections represent a potential zone of wea kness in ships and it is essential that their mechanical behaviour is well characterised. Previous work has focused on static as well as fat igue behaviour. There is growing evidence that delamination induced da mage in the root of the tee is a potential source of catastrophic fail ure as well as being expensive in repair terms. The paper briefly outl ines the load transfer mechanisms in single skin tee joints under repr esentative boundary conditions and establishes the failure inception a nd damage progression under static loading. Numerical analyses are the n presented to link the observed failure scenarios to stress levels in different parts of the tee. Lastly, a fracture mechanics approach is used to identify the seriousness of a particular delamination vis-a-vi s ultimate failure. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Limited. All rights rese rved.