An experimental and numerical investigation of strength characteristics of carbon-epoxy pinned-joint plates

Abstract An experimental and numerical study has been carried out to investigate the strength of a pinned-joint carbon epoxy composite plate with [0°/45°/−45°/90°] S and [90°/45°/−45°/0°] S stacking configurations. The experiments were carried out according to the ASTM D953 standard [Standard Test method for Bearing Strength of Plastics, ASTM Designation, 342–346], and the numerical analyses were performed by the finite element method. The ratio of the edge distance to the pin diameter ( E / D ), and the ratio of the specimen width to the pin diameter ( W / D ) were systematically varied during analyses. The results from both analyses show firstly that the prepared specimen configurations give bearing mode, secondly that the [90°/45°/−45°/0°] S configuration is stronger when compared to [0°/45°/−45°/90°] S , and finally that both configurations reach their upper limit bearing strengths when E / D and W / D ratios are equal or greater than 4.