Investigation flexural behavior of hybrid-reinforced layered filament wound pipes using experimental tests and numerical model

In the present study, filament wound pipes were fabricated by glass and polypropylene (PP) yarns with the three different filament winding angles 55°, 70°, and 82°. Glass and PP yarns were wound around the pipe with two methods; layered and hybrid. Epoxy resin was applied as a matrix to manufacture composite samples. It should be mentioned that composite samples were made in different layers. The three-point bending test was carried out on all samples to investigate the bending behavior of the composites. The experimental results showed that the winding angle 55° is better than other angles in terms of improving the flexural strength of the composite. Moreover, using hybrid yarn to fabricate the composite sample increases the flexural strength and energy absorption of the composite. In the next step, a multi-scale finite element model was applied to predict the flexural behavior of the composites. In this model, a unit-cell of each composite structure was modeled at the meso scale and elastic constants of the composites were extracted by a Python code. In addition, failure parameters for the composites were determined according to micromechanical equations. All elastic and failure parameters were utilized for the macro model and simulation three-point bending test. The numerical results were compared with the experimental and a good agreement could be observed between numerical and experimental results. So, the proposed model is proper to predict the mechanical behavior of the filament wound composite with high accuracy.