Published Paper Details:

The design and development of composite pressure vessels are driven by the need for minimum weight. Design, analysis, and optimization complexities are compromised due to constraints of computational resources and shorter cycle time. Advanced lightweight laminated composites are increasingly being used in modern Aerospace structures, for enhancing their structural efficiency and performance. One of the most common failure modes for composite structures is delamination. The remote loading applied to the composite components are typically resolved into interlaminar tension and shear stresses at discontinuities that create a mixed mode I, mode II and mode III delaminations. In this study, we focused on the former option by keeping the ply sequence constant and varying the associated ply angle. For the case of un-cracked shell, the cylindrical shell with the composite ply angle of 30 leads to maximum load capacity against buckling load. In addition, the effect of crack length and orientation on the buckling behavior of composite cylindrical shells comprising a through crack is studied, using a special meshing scheme and providing the inter205 element. Based on the fracture analysis and calculated the crack growth (7.5 TON) and failure load (10.5 TON) based on power law Cylinder were tested up to 7.5 TON and LVDTs removed. The cylinder failure load is 11.2 TON against a failure strain in carbon fabric/ epoxy composite is 3200-3500 micro-strains. They show good agreement at all the regions. However, the result finite element analysis shows close agreement with the experimental results. Also, the design stresses were within safe limits. Radial displacement as per FEA is 0.8mm and experimental value is 0.6mm at 7.5 Ton load. For the case of un-cracked cylindrical shell with the composite ply angle of 30 leads to maximum buckling capability. Investigation was carried out on the composite cylinder with delamination, when cylinder was subjected to compressive load. The strain energy release rate is increase in mode-2 leads to reducing the buckling factor was observed.