1.1 Mechanics of Composite Materials

There are many excellent textbooks available on mechanics of fiber-reinforced composite materials like those in [1-12]. Therefore this book will not present any theoretical formulations or derivations of mechanics of composite materials. Only the main equations are summarized for each chapter followed by examples. In addition only problems from linear elastic structural mechanics are used throughout the book.

The main subject of this book is the mechanics of fiber-reinforced composite materials. These materials are usually composed of brittle fibers and a ductile matrix. The geometry is in the form of a laminate which consists of several parallel layers where each layer is called a lamina. The advantage of this construction is that it gives the material more strength and less weight.

The mechanics of composite materials deals mainly with the analysis of stresses and strains in the laminate. This is usually performed by analyzing the stresses and strains in each lamina first. The results for all the laminas are then integrated over the length of the laminate to obtain the overall quantities. In this book, Chaps. 2 6 deal mainly with the analysis of stress and strain in one single lamina. This is performed in the local lamina coordinate system and also in the global laminate coordinate system. Laminate analysis is then discussed...