High-resolution elastic analysis of thin-ply composite laminates

Abstract

Several studies showed that thin-plies composite laminates apparently exhibit higher strength than its counterpart using thicker plies. In this work, a high-resolution numerical discretization based on the use of in-plane-out-of-plane separated representations within the Proper Generalized Decomposition PGD framework is performed in di erent composites laminates for determining the e ect of ply-thickness on the laminate sti ness. The results reveal that the global sti ness increases with the ply-thickness reduction. The analysis also reveals that this mechanical enhancement is due to structural e ects and not to the mechanical con nement initially advanced.