Modelling creep behaviour of orthotropic composites by the coincident element method

In this paper, the coincident method proposed previously is applied to model the four-point-bending creep experiments conducted at the Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Composite Structures (CRC-ACS) on carbon-epoxy composite laminates. A parameter identification methodology is first developed to determine the elastic and viscoelastic material models to be used for a coincident element. Simulations are then conducted to model the flexural creep response of the composite laminates under different loading and temperature conditions. The predicted results are in reasonably good agreement with those obtained by experiments. It is demonstrated that the coincident element method is a relatively simple and useful tool for modelling orthotropic and viscoelastic response of laminated composites by using a finite element package that only supports isotropic viscoelastic material models.