Study of variation of thermal expansion coefficients in carbon/epoxy laminated composite plates

Thermal expansion is an important property to define the end use application, and to model residual stresses and related problems in a composite part. Thus its accurate determination is essential. In laminated composites, this parameter depends largely on the orientation of fibres, fibre fraction, type of resin and reinforcement, etc. In this article, numerical results on the coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) at different angles in the composite plates (having different stacking sequences of plies) found using finite element analysis are presented. Experimental values of these coefficients for [0/90] are found in satisfactory agreement with the simulations. Finally, a mathematical model is proposed for modelling these coefficients.