Application of the tailored fibre placement (TFP) process for a local reinforcement on an “open-hole” tension plate from carbon/epoxy laminates

Abstract The aim of this work is the application of the Tailored Fibre Placement (TFP) process for manufacturing a stress-field aligned local reinforcement on an “open-hole” tensile plate. The TFP process allows an exact transfer of locally calculated stress trajectories onto fibre preforms. Textile materials from a non-woven Carbon fibre multilayer were used for the open-hole preform. The local TFP reinforcement was stitched from Carbon fibre, consolidation has been carried out by vacuum assisted resin process. The stress trajectories were determined with FE computing. The strain distributions under loading conditions are investigated on-line by the 2D optical deformation measurement method. Loading the plates by tensile stress the reinforcement reduced the stress around the hole so that the fracture took place outside of the TFP reinforcement and the tensile stress reached values as measured on the unnotched plate.