Strength reliability analysis of aluminium–carbon fiber/epoxy composite laminates

Abstract Strength reliability of composite laminated structures relates to a series of parameters such as the design sizes, material parameters and load level. By introducing the Monte Carlo simulation and response surface method respectively, a static strength-based reliability model is proposed to predict the reliability of aluminium–carbon fiber/epoxy composite laminates for composite vessels. The burst pressure of composite vessels for different layer structures is predicted using finite element analysis. In the reliability analysis, two design parameters for composite vessels: the radius of polar axis and the winding thickness of each composite layer at the cylinder are assumed to obey the uniform distribution and Gaussian distribution respectively, and the burst pressure of composite vessels is taken as the random output response. Effects of the number of sampling and the limit strength on the strength reliability of composite vessels are explored. Besides, the numerical results obtained using two methods and two distributions for two random input parameters are compared in terms of the calculation efficiency and accuracy. Numerical results also indicate the proposed probability method exhibits preferable advantage over the conventional design method merely using empirical safety coefficient.

[1]  Stephen W. Tsai,et al.  A General Theory of Strength for Anisotropic Materials , 1971 .

[2]  Chen Lin,et al.  Monte carlo finite element method of structure reliability analysis , 1993 .

[3]  Tomas Jansson,et al.  Reliability analysis of a sheet metal forming process using Monte Carlo analysis and metamodels , 2008 .

[4]  Onur Sayman,et al.  Burst failure load of composite pressure vessels , 2009 .

[5]  A. Young,et al.  Application of the spectral stochastic finite element method for performance prediction of composite structures , 2007 .

[6]  William J. Hill,et al.  A Review of Response Surface Methodology: A Literature Survey* , 1966 .

[7]  Andreas Züttel,et al.  Materials for hydrogen storage , 2003 .

[8]  Ping Xu,et al.  Artificial immune system for optimal design of composite hydrogen storage vessel , 2009 .

[9]  Jinyang Zheng,et al.  Progressive failure analysis of carbon fiber/epoxy composite laminates using continuum damage mechanics , 2008 .

[10]  Ping Xu,et al.  Optimal design of high pressure hydrogen storage vessel using an adaptive genetic algorithm , 2010 .

[11]  Joseph C. Leung,et al.  A theory on the discharge coefficient for safety relief valve , 2004 .

[12]  Jinyang Zheng,et al.  Elasto-plastic stress analysis and burst strength evaluation of Al-carbon fiber/epoxy composite cylindrical laminates , 2008 .

[13]  Jinyang Zheng,et al.  Finite element analysis of burst pressure of composite hydrogen storage vessels , 2009 .

[14]  Gerhart I. Schuëller,et al.  Scalable uncertainty and reliability analysis by integration of advanced Monte Carlo simulation and generic finite element solvers , 2009 .

[15]  Serge Samper,et al.  Optimization method for stamping tools under reliability constraints using genetic algorithms and finite element simulations , 2010 .

[16]  Manolis Papadrakakis,et al.  Stochastic finite element-based reliability analysis of space frames , 1998 .

[17]  Jinyang Zheng,et al.  A Monte Carlo finite element simulation of damage and failure in SiC/Ti–Al composites , 2006 .

[18]  S. Lin,et al.  Reliability predictions of laminated composite plates with random system parameters , 2000 .