Residual stress characterization for laminated composites

With increasing applications of advanced laminated composites, process-induced residual stress has drawn more and more attention in recent years. Efforts have been devoted to understanding residual stress both quantitatively and qualitatively.; In the current study, a novel technique called the Cure Referencing Method was developed which has the capability for measuring the residual stress on the symmetric laminated composite plates. It can also differentiate residual stress into two components: one is due to the mismatch of the coefficient of thermal expansion, the other is caused by the matrix chemical curing shrinkage.; The chemical curing shrinkage of the polymer matrix was investigated in further detail. A technique was developed to measure the post-gel chemical curing shrinkage which is the portion of curing shrinkage that really induces the residual stress in the polymer matrix composites.; Time-dependent material property is another issue associated with polymer matrix composite materials. The data of several short-term tensile creep tests run at different temperature were used to construct a linear viscoelastic: model for describing the behavior of the composites over a long period of time. It was found that physical aging of the polymer matrix needs to be taken into account in order to have a more accurate representation of the long-term behavior. A fair agreement was obtained between the result of the long-term creep test and the master curve constructed from several momentary creep tests.