A comparative study of failure features in aerospace grade unidirectional and bidirectional woven CFRP composite laminates under four-point bend fatigue loads

Damage mechanisms in unidirectional (UD) and bi-directional (BD) woven carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates subjected to four point flexure, both in static and fatigue loadings, were studied. The damage progression in composites was monitored by observing the slopes of the load vs. deflection data that represent the stiffness of the given specimen geometry over a number of cycles. It was observed that the unidirectional composites exhibit gradual loss in stiffness whereas the bidirectional woven composites show a relatively quicker loss during stage II of fatigue damage progression. Both, the static and the fatigue failures in unidirectional carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites originates due to generation of cracks on compression face while in bidirectional woven composites the damage ensues from both the compression and the tensile faces. These observations are supported by a detailed fractographic analysis.

Upwind compact scheme with dispersion control for aerodynamic equations

A compact upwind scheme with dispersion control is developed using a dissipation analogy of the dispersion term. The term is important in reducing the unphysical fluctuations in numerical solutions. The scheme depends on three free parameters that may be used to regulate the size of dissipation as well as the size and direction of dispersion. A coefficient to coordinate the dispersion is given. The scheme has high accuracy, the method is simple, and the amount of computation is small. It also has a good capability of capturing shock waves. Numerical experiments are carried out with two-dimensional shock wave reflections and the results are very satisfactory.

Diffusion analogy and shock capturing for solving aerodynamic equations

Improving the resolution of the shock is one of the most important subjects in computational aerodynamics. In this paper the behaviour of the solutions near the shock is discussed and the reason of the oscillation production is investigated heuristically. According to the differential approximation of the difference scheme the so-called diffusion analogy equation and the diffusion analogy coefficient are defined. Four methods for improving the resolution of the shock are presented using the concept of diffusion analogy.