Structural analysis of composites

This report provides an insight into the use of the Euler-Bernoulli beam and Classical lamination theory to create an analytical mathematical model that can be used to study of the flexural stiffness of the unidirectional laminated composite beam affected by the various unidirectional fibres orientation. In order to increase the confidence level of the numerical results obtained, a new flexural stiffness of method 3, was derived by Yap et al. [16] from classical laminate theory which takes into account of all possible coupling responses in a laminated composite beam is used. In this report, an approach is proposed using numerical software, Maple to model and assist in the numerical computation of attaining the flexural stiffness of the various unidirectional laminated composites in this study. The obtained numerical results are used to correlate with the experimental results achieved by the Chua [2] with the objective of verifying its reliability and accuracy with its predictions, a good close matching among the results was observed. The comparison of results showed that the flexural stiffness of method 3, yields a good lower bound solution for predicting the flexural stiffness of the laminated composite. Finally, with the use of the Maple, the studies of coupling responses of the stiffness matrices of the laminated composite are analysed and compiled.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering