A thermoelastic disc test for the mechanical characterisation of fibre-reinforced moulded composites: application

The application of a new test method, developed from the Brazilian disc test, is described in which the thermoelastic response from the centre of a fibre-reinforced orthotropic disc loaded in diametral compression is obtained for a succession of disc orientations. The directions of the principal material axes, the principal mechanical and material properties, the fibre content and the principal values of the orientation tensor are obtained from the test data. The application of the relevant theory is presented in this paper; a companion paper gives the theory.