Constitutive Laws of Composite Materials via Multiaxial Testing and Numerical Optimization.

A multiaxial loading on a laminate, combined with numerical optimization is utilized to determine the five elastic constants for a transversely isotropic composite material in this study. A special in-plane loader, capable of any combination of in-plane displacements plus a rotation is utilized for the testing portion. A corresponding finite element analysis model is created and numerical optimization is utilized to obtain the optimum engineering elastic constants. By utilizing only one test specimen geometry, the resources for determining the constitutive properties can be significantly reduced in terms of time and money, and more precise properties over a wider loading range are gained with this procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]