PEEK/carbon fiber composites: Experimental evaluation of unidirectional laminates and theoretical prediction of their properties

Abstract Comparison of tensile characteristics (modulus, strength) measured for bought‐in laminates and also laminates manufactured in‐house with published data has proved the testing procedure to be sound and compression molding to give composites of good quality. In the theoretical domain, the micromechanical approach was used to predict engineering constants such as the longitudinal, transverse and shear moduli that characterize the laminate in its principal directions. For the off‐axis loading, macro‐mechanical abstraction was applied and the angular dependencies of the above composite parameters were further supplemented by those for the Poisson ratio and the ultimate strength. Regardless of the theoretical approach used, the error of the predictions relative to the experimental data does not exceed 10 percent.