Tensile characteristics of carbon fiber reinforced composite with preset interleaving plies

A variety of discontinuous fiber composite laminate layouts were designed to satisfy special structural needs. Corresponding composite tensile coupons having preset interleaving ply were tested to measure their strength and rigidity. The experimental results show the strength of the interleaving ply composite is significantly lower than that of the continuous one, whereas it has comparable rigidity. The internal load transferring mechanism was suggested to analyze the main factors affecting the ultimate tensile strength. Based on it, a statistical relationship has been built to reflect the dependence of the strength to the interleaving length.