Modeling of In-Plane Shear Modulus of Composite Materials for Aerospace Applications

Abstract

An evaluation of micromechanical models for predicting the in-plane shear modulus, G,₂, of five composite materials for aerospace applications has been carried out for three test methods (10° off-axis tensile, -45O tensile and 900 Iosipescu). Seven existing micromechanical models predicted similar trends, however, they did not accurately predict the experimental results. The use of mathematically simplified micromechanical models containing only G,m and V. resulted in values within 10% of those for the original models. This led to the development of individual, simplified design-oriented expressions of the form:

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for which the predicted results are in better agreement with the experimentally determined values than those of the existing micromechanical models.