THEORY AND PRACTICE OF CALCULATION OF A COMPOSITE STRENGTH FROM CONSTITUENT PROPERTIES

The strength is among the most important characteristics of a structural material. How to reasonably estimate the ultimate load carrying capacity of a fiber reinforced composite still remains a world-wide great challenge. Through years of studies by this author and his collaborators, the prediction of the ultimate strength of a laminated composite subjected to an arbitrary load based only on its constituent properties measured independently is no longer an unachievable goal. How to approach to this goal is briefly described in this paper. It is highly possible in a near future that, when a material database for all necessary properties of the candidate constituent fiber and matrix materials is established, the design and the development of any composite structure will not solely depend on experiments or can even be accomplished without any experiment on the composite itself. This will not only save a great amount of money for experiments, but also significantly shorten the development period of a new composite product, and promote more effective and wide usage of composite structures.