Stress concentrations in filament-stiffened sheets of finite length

Includes bibliographical references (p. 11).

A simple model of filamentary composite material is employed to investigate stress concentrations in a filament-stiffened sheet of finite length. The model is composed of a single layer of parallel, tension-carrying filaments embedded in a shear-carrying matrix. The sheet is of finite length in the filament direction and of infinite length normal to the filament direction. Filament stress-concentration factors are calculated as functions of the number of broken filaments and a length-stiffness parameter for the cases of uniform normal edge load and uniform normal edge displacement. In the uniform-edge-load case, the stress-concentration factors are found to increase with decreasing filament length. The opposite effect is noted in the uniform-edge-displacement case where, in addition, the stress-concentration factor is found to have an upper limit which is fixed by the value of the length-stiffness parameter.