Design and Failure Analysis of a Laminated Composite Tube using Maximum Stress and Tsai-Wu Failure Criteria

A composite tube made by filament winding technique was designed and analysed. The tube comprises of four layers of Carbon-Epoxy plies. The failure of the tube was investigated by varying the orientation angles of the plies forming the tube and check it against failure under axial compression and internal pressure loads, special design requirements were satisfied (direction of the twist angle). Maximum stress failure criterion was implied and the tube winding angles were chosen to be (-75o and -39.3o) which produce a maximum twist angle of (-12.986o) without failure. This set of winding angle results were tested numerically using Tsai-Wu failure criterion under axial loading condition and compared to maximum stress failure criterion results. It was found that the tube failed under axial compression load according to Tsai-Wu failure criterion while no failure recorded according to maximum stress failure criterion. It was concluded that the sole dependence on one criterion for assessing composite structures is not sufficient and several criteria application might observe other modes of failure. Finally, some recommendations for tube design improvement were presented and tested such as varying the load, varying the stacking sequence of the plies and adding more plies to the composite tube