Prediction of uncertain elastic parameters of a braided composite

Uncertainties are generally included in elastic parameters of the fiber reinforced textile composites. An approach on predicting the statistical characteristics of elastic modulus of braided composites using vibration test data is proposed in this paper. The method consists of two main steps, firstly estimate the initial mean values of the orthotropic elastic parameters by adopting the homogenization method, and then identify the variability of the elastic constants using a stochastic model updating algorithm with the first-order perturbation approach, the uncertain parameters are assumed as the summation of mean value and a deviation term with zero mean. A braided composite panel is employed in numerical simulations to verify the proposed method, the random samples of experimental modal data are simulated with the Latin Hypercube Sampling technique based on a reference finite element model, which is constructed by using deterministic updated elastic parameters. Results show that the mean value and standard deviation of the uncertain effective parameters of braided composite can be identified from modal data using the proposed stochastic identification method.