Unveiling interrelations among material properties of polymer composite laminates

Meso-scale numerical simulation of composite coupons is often defined using a ply-by-ply discretisation, where a large number of material properties are required to define the orthotropic elastic and failure behaviour of each ply. The interrelations observed between Tsai’s modulus and ply (intralaminar) material properties of several carbon-epoxy systems are used to devise a procedure that enables the fast estimation of meso-scale parameters. The predicted intralaminar strength and fracture toughness values are in good agreement with the experimental values. Furthermore, the utilisation of Tsai’s modulus paves the way for a unified approach, where a minimum set of experiments allows for estimating the material card required to achieve meso-scale simulations (e.g., open-hole tension) with good accuracy.