Experimental Study on Stability of Woven Fiber Composite Plates in Hygrothermal Environment

The present study deals with both experimental and numerical investigation on buckling behavior of laminated composite plates subjected to varying temperature and moisture concentration. Quantitative results are presented to show the effects of different parameters of woven fiber laminate on buckling of composite plates subjected to hygrothermal loads. A simple laminated plate model is developed for the buckling of composite plates subjected to hygrothermal loading. A computer program based on FEM in MATLAB environment is developed to perform all necessary computations. The woven fiber Glass/Epoxy specimens were hygrothermally conditioned in a humidity cabinet where the conditions were maintained at temperatures of 300K-425K and relative humidity (RH) ranging from 0-1.0% for moisture concentrations. Experimental results show that there is reduction in buckling loads in KN with the increase in temperature and moisture concentrationfor laminates with simply supported and two sides free and two sides clamped boundary conditions respectively.