Determination of residual stresses in a carbon-fibre reinforced polymer using the incremental hole-drilling technique

Abstract

An extensive variety of experimental techniques exist to determining residual stresses, but few of these techniques is suitable, however, for finding the residual stresses that exist in orthotropic or anisotropic layered materials, such as carbon-fibre reinforced polymers (CFRP). Among these techniques, particularly among the relaxation techniques, the incremental hole-drilling technique (IHD) has shown to be a suitable technique to be developed for this purpose. This technique was standardized for the case of linear elastic isotropic materials, such as the metallic alloys in general. However, its reliable application to anisotropic and layered materials, such as CFRP materials, needs to be better studied. In particular, accurate calculation methods to determine the residual stresses in these materials based on the measured in-depth strain relaxation curves need to be developed. In this work, existing calculation methods and already proposed theoretical approaches to determine residual stresses in composite laminates by the incremental hole-drilling technique are reviewed. The selected residual stress calculation method is implemented using MATLAB. For these calculations, specific calibration coefficients have to be numerically determined by the finite element method, using the ANSYS software. The developed MATLAB scripts are then validated using an experimental procedure previously developed. This experimental procedure was performed using CFRP specimens, with the stacking sequence [0o, 90o]5s and, therefore, this composite laminate was selected as case study in this work. Some discrepancies between the calculated stresses using the MATLAB scripts and those imposed during the experimental calibration procedure are observed. The errors found could be explained considering the limitations inherent to the incremental hole-drilling technique and the theoretical approach followed. However, the obtained results showed that the incremental hole-drilling can be considered a promising technique for residual stress measurement in composite laminates.