Investigation of the Residual Stress State in an Epoxy Based Specimen

Process induced residual stresses may play an important role under service loading conditions for fiber reinforced composite. They may initiate premature cracks and alter the internal stress level. Therefore, the developed numerical models have to be validated with the experimental observations. In the present work, the formation of the residual stresses/strains are captured from experimental measurements and numerical models. An epoxy/steel based sample configuration is considered which creates an in-plane biaxial stress state during curing of the resin. A hole drilling process with a diameter of 5 mm is subsequently applied to the specimen and the released strains after drilling are measured using the Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique. The material characterization of the utilized epoxy material is obtained from the experimental tests such as differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) for the curing behavior, dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) for the elastic modulus evolution during the process and a thermo-mechanical analysis (TMA) for the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) and curing shrinkage. A numerical process model is also developed by taking the constitutive material models, i.e. cure kinetics, elastic modulus, CTE, chemical shrinkage, etc. together with the drilling process using the finite element method. The measured and predicted in-plane residual strain states are compared for the epoxy/metal biaxial stress specimen