The effects of diamond cutout size and fibre orientation on the failure behaviour of graphite epoxy and glass epoxy composite laminates.

This report presents the effect of diamond cutouts and fibre orientations on the failure behaviour of Graphite Epoxy and Glass Epoxy composite laminates. Two important approaches were used in this study which were numerical validation and failure analysis. For numerical justification, simulated results were compared with the analytical value calculated from Wolfram Alpha website. It was observed that an acceptable difference occurred, with the highest percentage error of 0.313% and 0.339% in x and y directions, respectively. Moreover, for the failure analysis, its simulation was conducted using plates with and without the diamond cutouts, using maximum stress theory as the failure criteria. The outcomes showed that the plate with cutout had considerably lower strength as compared to the one without it. However, it was also observed that plate with cutout was far less affected when the fibre orientation was varied, as compared to the without cutout type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]