Hygrothermal effects in composites: Influence of geometry and determination of transverse coefficient of thermal expansion

This work evaluates the influence of geometric properties, the length-to-width ratio, named Aspect Ratio, on curvatures in [θ − 90/θ] T carbon/epoxy composite laminates at room temperature due to thermal residual stresses. A new method to determine experimentally thermal residual curvatures in composites laminates by defining small-length increments on the surface of deformed plate has been exposed. [–45 4 /45 4 ] T was considered to obtain a...