A Study on the Room-Temperature Curvature Shapes of Unsymmetric Laminates Including Slippage Effects

Abstract

The room-temperature shapes of cured unsymmetric composite laminates have out-of-plane warping after autoclave processing. In addition, they exhibit two stable room-temperature configurations due to snap-through phenomena when the side length of laminates exceed a critical value. The cured shape of unsymmetric laminates are influenced by many factors. Experiments show that the effect of tool-plate cannot be ignored and has significant influence on the cured shape. This study examines slippage effects resulting from the interaction between the laminates and the tool-plate which are ignored in the previous researches. By introducing a dimensionless slippage coefficient and correlating the corresponding value with experimental results, the influence of processing parameters is investigated. Modeling is extended to predict curvatures of general lamination layup configurations.