Ultimate performance of GRP-laminates under in-plane biaxial loading

Widespread acceptance and utilisation of composite laminates requires confidence in their load-bearing capacity. The ability to accurately predict the stiffness and strength of laminates composed of glass-fibre reinforced polyester (GRP) is necessary for a sound design when laminates are used in structural applications. In this paper an easily accessible computational tool has been described that is able to deal with the phenomenon of progressive failure. Because loading in structural applications is merely biaxial, we designed experiments to test the biaxial capacities of GRP-laminates. The final computational results show an excellent agreement with the biaxial test results.