Effect of residual stresses in a filament wound laminated conical shell

This paper examines the effect of residual fabrication stresses on the crushing behaviour, energy absorption, failure mechanism and failure mode of a filament wound laminated conical composite shell. The static crushing behaviour of the conical composite shell under uniform axial compressive load is investigated experimentally. The cone vertex angles were 0°, 6°, 12° and 18°. The numerical result shows that residual stresses developed have been concentrated at the small ends of cones. Experimental results obtained from this investigation show that the initial failure was dominated by interfacial and shear failure, while the delamination and eventually fibre fracture were dominated by the failure mechanism after the initial failure. It is also found that the static crushing behaviour of the conical shell is highly sensitive to the change in cone vertex angle, which strongly dominates the residual fabrication stress development. It can be deduced that as the axial residual stress increases, the initial failure load decreases.