Size Effects at Corners of Anisotropic Material Discontinuities

Reinforcement patches of composite laminates often possess corners due to design and manufacturing necessities. Hence, the patches reconstitute the demanded effective strength or stiffness in the region considered but at their boundaries also constitute a source for stress localizations. The complex potential method is a means for the investigation of such stress localizations. With the help of appropriate complex potentials the mechanical in-plane fields around the reinforcement corner can be expressed as series representations. A first analysis step is to obtain the exponents and corresponding modes which cause singular behavior of the membrane forces. Then, the determination of appropriately defined generalized membrane force intensity factors is used to show whether and how the singularity exponents are in effect. On this basis it is possible to deduce what impact a specific loading condition or the reinforcement corner's material combination and geometry have on the character of the singularity. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)