Experimental and numerical investigation of buckling and post-buckling behavior of filament wound composite cylinders under lateral compression loading by parallel rigid plates

Nowadays, reinforced polymers using by means of glass fibers are extensively used in industry. One of the used loads that composite cylinders undergo during use are lateral compression loading. To investigate the buckling and post-buckling behavior of filament wound composite cylinder, some prototypes were prepared with winding angle equal to ±75 degree. The samples were pressurized by means of two parallel rigid plates according to ASTM standard. The force-displacement diagrams resulting from normal loading on the rigid plates were plotted experimentally. In addition to experimental tests, numerical simulations were carried out by means of Abaqus commercial software. Since the composite cylinder experiences damage, the Hashin’s three dimensional damage model was utilized to consider the damage effects occurring during loading. To apply Hashin’s three dimensional damage model, a UMAT subroutine coding procedure was conducted using program Fortran 77. The mechanical properties and composite cylinder fracture strengths were obtained by measuring fiber and resin properties based on the relative standard and then separately by micro mechanical relations concerning the layers. The cylinder undergoes buckling because of the existence of pressure between the parallel rigid plates. However since the cylinder undergoes a stability condition after buckling. This phenomena does not have significant effected on the overall behavior of the cylinders. Appropriate agreement is observed between the experimental results and the numerical simulations.