Biaxial transverse compression testing for a fibre reinforced polymer material

Paper in proceeding, 2020

Unidirectional laminates have been tested under uniaxial transverse compression and under biaxial transverse compression. Failure occurred by shear in an inclined failure plane parallel to the fibres. The transverse shear response of the material on the failure plane was evaluated from the tests. In the biaxial tests, the failure load was considerably higher than in the uniaxial tests. For a given transverse shear strain the transverse shear stress was also higher in the case of biaxial compression. It is also shown that using waisted specimens instead of prismatic specimens does not seem to bring noticeable benefits for through-thickness uniaxial compression tests. The experimental results presented here are important input to the development and the validation of damage models of fibre reinforced polymer materials accounting for the matrix nonlinear response in shear and compression.