Thermal Expansion of Composite Laminates

Abstract

When connecting composite materials and isotropic materials, their different thermal expansion coefficients may introduce additional stress to the structure. This article shows the way the fiber composite laminates may be designed and optimized in order to fit the thermal expansion of the pair isotropic material and thus resulting in similar thermal deformations in both of the materials. An optimization model is developed based on the micromechanics theory of composite laminates where the plies angles represent the design variables while the objects are represented by the thermal expansion coefficients of the laminate.