Browsing by Author "Jayasekara, M"

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item: Conference-Abstract
Nonlinear bending response of two-ply plain woven carbon fibre composites
Nadarajah, S; Jayasekara, M; Mallikarachchi, C
Ultra-thin woven fibre composites are becoming popular in weight sensitive applications and hence it is important to predict their mechanical properties for design improvements. This paper presents a simple homogenized micro-mechanical modelling technique with solid elements for predicting mechanical properties of the thin woven fibre composites. A representative unit cell has been generated using a finite element pre-processor, TexGen and an elliptical crosssectioned yarn is then idealized to behave according to Kirchhoff – Love plate theory. Bezier spline is chosen as a suitable interpolation function for the composite, and further analysis is performed with two distinct unit cell representations. It is shown that a simple 3D solid model with idealized elliptical cross section predicts both in-plane and bending properties with good accuracy in the linear regime. The proposed 3D models are capable of predicting the response in the nonlinear regime and has overcome the anomalies faced with 1D model with respect to shear and Poisson’s ratio.
item: Conference-Full-text
parametric study on the homogenized response of woven carbon fibre composites
(IEEE, 2020-07) Herath, S; Jayasekara, M; Mallikarachchi, C; Weeraddana, C; Edussooriya, CUS; Abeysooriya, RP
Ultra-thin woven fibre composites are becoming popular in a wide range of weight-sensitive applications and hence it is important to predict their mechanical properties for accurate analysis and design purposes. This paper presents a parametric study on the homogenized response of two-ply plain woven carbon fibre composites. Influence of volume fractions, traction coefficients and fibre/resin material parameters on the laminate stiffness matrix (ABD) entries were investigated. For this study, a parametric representative unit cell is generated using a finite element pre-processor, TexGen and a Matlab based algorithm. An automated algorithmic computation of the laminate stiffness matrix is used to study its variations for different combinations of uncertain parameters. Such variations are compared with the experimental results to learn the possible reasons for the observed deviations between experimental and numerical results. It is shown that the volume fractions linearly scale the laminate stiffness entries, though interestingly, each entry has a unique scaling factor.
item: Conference-Full-text
Size effect and fibre arrangement on meso-mechanical modelling of woven fibre composites
(IEEE, 2021-07) Jayasekara, M; Herath, S; Gowrikanthan, N; Mallikarachchi, C; Adhikariwatte, W; Rathnayake, M; Hemachandra, K
The mechanical behaviour of woven fibre composites is of paramount importance owing to the rapid use of these engineered materials in various industries. A meso-mechanical representative unit cell (RUC) is generally used to represent the material for predicting mechanical behaviour in a virtual environment. However, the selection of the RUC size and fibre arrangement has not been studied in detail. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate the effect of size and the relative positioning of plies of an RUC of two-ply plain weave carbon fibre laminate on mechanical property predictions. First, a series of meso-mechanical models with different relative positionings of plies and sizes of RUCs were modelled. Then the constitutive relationship was developed for each RUC model. Finally, the calculated mechanical properties are compared with the experimental results to investigate the influence of size and relative positioning on the predictions. The results indicate that the effect of both the size and relative positioning of the RUC is minimal except for a few parameters. This leads to the conclusion that a minor effect on the mechanical properties of woven fibre composites exists especially from the size of RUC.