Modulus Determination for Composite Materials with Processing Variations- A Statistical Approach
by
Oladapo Akinyede
NC A&T State University
Coauthors: Oladapo Akinyede, Ajit Kelkar and Jag Sankar

Evaluation and characterization of the mechanical properties for reinforced fiber composites show significant scatter of the experimental data. Lay-up orientation and processing conditions during the fabrication of composite materials have been shown to be the source of this data scatter in the property determination. The combination of the variations in the lay-up phase angle and the volume fraction of the fabricated panels and in the test coupons used for mechanical tests are susceptive for the source of these data scatter. Thus various panels are fabricated with varying fiber lay-up phase angle and processing conditions to give different fiber volume fraction for the material test coupons. Correlation techniques and factorial ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) are investigated in the determination of the modulus property of the fiber reinforced composites using experimental data from various test coupons. The statistical models developed are presented in this paper. The models will not only provide a systematic approach to material property determination, but will also provide a better understanding of the influence of these variables on the property through parametric modeling. Also the influence/ weighted consequence of each independent variable are also investigated in this present paper.

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Date received: July 11, 2007