A predictive creep model for un-stitched and stitched woven composites

Previous studies have shown that woven carbon composites exhibit considerab le creep even at ambient temperature, and that through-thickness stitching can significantly reduce the creep rate, This article presents a mechanisti c model for quantifying the time-dependent creep of woven carbon fibre comp osites, assuming that the carbon fibres remain elastic and the matrix is li near visco-elastic. It is shown that the predictions of the model are in cl ose agreement with experimental results for both unstitched and stitched wo ven carbon composites. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.