Study on the strength prediction model of Comeld composites joints

It is well known that the joint is one of the weakness points in composite structures. Comeld is a novel technology which can be applied in metal-composite joints. However, there are few researches towards the study on its mechanical properties in previous literature. As the directions of the fiber and the distributions of the matrix are changed during Comeld process, the mechanical properties of Comeld composites joints vary from the Uncomeld composites. In this paper, the progressive damage method for predicting the strength of Comeld composites joints is developed and programed by considering Tsai-Wu failure criteria and the structural failure criterion based on 3-D finite element method. The strength prediction method is applied to predict the strength of Comeld joints. The good agreement between the experimental and the prediction result was found, which means that the methods developed in this paper are effective.