Author : Hussam Hussein Ali and Majid Habeeb Faidh-Allah

The main objective of this research is to determine the experimental and numerical critical buckling load of the composite materials clamped-clamped rectangular laminated plates for a zig-zag model. The first step of experimental analysis involved manufacturing the specimens of a zig-zag model from E-glass/polyester, carbon/polyester and hybrid/polyester materials to find the mechanical properties at room temperature, such as modulus of elasticity, ultimate tensile strength and Poisson’s ratio. Also, the second step of experimental part is testing the shear stress of these zig-zag composite materials specimens to measure the separation of the layers in the beginning. And the third step of experimental study involved the buckling test of three types of zig-zag composite materials laminated plates with the different aspect ratios(a/b = 1, 1.5 and 2) to find the critical load that cause buckling. The numerical part deals with the finite element modeling of composite materials laminated plate for a zig-zag model, built with ANSYS software version 15.0. ANSYS element type called (shell 181). The main conclusion of this study is that the presence of the zig-zag fibers in the plate is improve the mechanical properties and the amount of critical buckling load. The layers delaminating for three types of composite materials laminated plates for a zig-zag model is not happened because the maximum shear stress results for these composite are greater than the ultimate buckling stress results. The results showed the critical buckling load is decrease when the aspect ratio is increase. This paper showed a good agreement between the experimental and numerical results, the maximum absolute percentage errors are 17.26%, 20.35% and 19.72% for E-glass/polyester, carbon/polyester and hybrid/polyester respectively.

Keywords: Buckling analysis, composite materials model zig-zag, clamped-clamped boundary conditions, rectangular plates, ANSYS 15.0

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.8, No.2 (March/April 2018)