Stress analysis of a multilayered composite cylinder with broken fibres over a finite region

Abstract The stress analysis of a multilayered composite cylinder with broken fibres over a finite region is considered. The cylinder comprises an internal thin walled aluminium alloy cylinder wrapped in layers formed by winding a unidirectional fibre bundle round it while simultaneously adding epoxy. A 3-D shear lag model is proposed and a system of differential–difference equations is developed. The problem is reduced to a system of linear ordinary differential equations with constant coefficients by introducing a transform of super-subscripts. The normal method of solving this kind of system of differential equations is then adopted. A numerical example is given for a composite cylinder with a rectangular surface notch. The results indicate that the stress distributions are subject to disturbance from the surface notch and that the stresses are highly localized, with the hoop stresses in the fibre bundles being much larger than other stresses in the epoxy. Notably, the hoop stresses in the aluminium alloy cylinder are larger than the stresses in the fibre bundle-epoxy layers.