A PROBABILISTIC APPROACH TO FAILURE PREDICTION OF FRP LAMINATED COMPOSITES

The failure of fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) laminated composites is examined taking into account statistical aspects of the basic strength properties of the material. The purpose of the analysis is to establi sh simple rules and methodologies for failure prediction under specifi c reliability requirements. An analytical approach ici developed for t he prediction of failure under general in-plans loading, consisting of a functional expansion technique for the derivation of the cumulative distribution function of the failure condition A semideterministic me thod is also examined, according to which the failure criterion is use d in the usual deterministic way bur with the basic strength values at a certain reliability level The two methods are gradually built up by first examining their effectiveness on the failure prediction of unid irectional laminae. Results for the case of a unidirectional laminate are presented for the Ease of off-axis layers, and both methods are sh own to yield results in fair agreement with Monte Carlo simulated ones and experimental data For the more general case of multilayered compo sites, comparison of theoretical results with numerical simulated data and experimental ones reveals that both methods hold their effectiven ess.