Damage and Failure Analysis of Short Carbon Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composite Pipe Using FEA

Abstract

Composite pipes are extensively used in various automobile and aeronautical applications due to their high strength to weight ratio. The aim of this work is to numerically analyze the damage and failure of short carbon fiber composite pipe with short carbon fiber as reinforcement and epoxy as matrix. A finite element model was developed in ANSYS workbench 19. A method is discussed to generate short fibers randomly oriented in the volume of composite pipe and the material properties were given to the fibers and matrix. A method is developed to model a composite pipe having anisotropic properties which means young’s modulus change with direction along the object as the fiber is of carbon and matrix is epoxy. Hydrostatic pressure was applied on inner and outer surface of the composite pipe. The results were compared with the laminated composite pipe and neat epoxy composite pipe. It was observed that under the same loading conditions the strength of the short carbon fiber composite was comparable with the laminated composite pipe. Short carbon fiber composite pipe which is less costly having good strength can be a good replacement for the costly filament winding pipe.