Specimen design, manufacturing and testing procedures for flat carbon fiber reinforced plastic laminates under biaxial loading

Abstract The optimization of a specimen design allowing the investigation of the biaxial strength of composite laminates over the full range of failure strain was the primary objective of this work. Multiaxial strength criteria are often found unreliable mainly as a result of the inherent complexity of biaxial tests and, in many cases, as a result of inefficient specimen designs. As a result of a development program combining numerical simulations and experimental measurements, a flat cruciform‐shaped specimen has been developed for carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) laminates. The design fulfills the basic criteria for such a specimen, namely allowing for a uniform biaxial stress/strain state to exist in the gauge area and for testing the virgin material up to failure in both the tension‐tension and tension‐compression quadrants of the strain/stress space. The fabrication of the specimen is described and a three‐step testing procedure for generating biaxial strength data is proposed. Typical results obtained from specimens of the proposed configuration tested in accordance with this procedure are presented. Results compare well with those obtained from tubular specimens, thus confirming the effectiveness of the proposed design. Experimental data obtained for the AS4/3501‐6 carbon/epoxy composite system are finally compared against strength predictions of recognized failure theories.