Investigation of Circular Woven Composite Preforms for Composite Pipes

Abstract

The main traditional technique for commercial manufacturing of composite pipes is filament winding in which the winding angle and the discontinuity of the structure (caused by starting and ending points of the winding process) are two important matters of concern. In the present study, circular woven fabric with its orthogonal net-shaped continuous structure was produced from polyester yarns. Fabric was wet with epoxy and hand lay-up was used to manufacture the composite pipes. Composite pipes were subjected to internal hydrostatic pressure and their burst strength was recorded. In addition, tensile strength of flat laminas was assessed in the warp and weft directions. We estimated and analysed the failure strength of composite pipes using Tresca’s failure criterion and Finite Element (FE) modeling. The experimental burst strength was almost 23% more than the FE model and 77% more than the theoretical estimate.

Keywords

• composite pipes
• burst strength
• finite element analysis (fea)
• circular woven fabric
• hand lay-up