The strength of pinned joints in laminated composites

An investigation was performed to study the response of pin-loaded laminated composites. Tensile tests were performed on E/glass-epoxy composites for two different ply orientations such as [0/±45]s and [90/±45]s. For each ply orientation, 20 different geometries were chosen. The major focus of the study was to characterize the failure mechanisms and to evaluate the effect of geometric dimensions on the bearing, shear-out and net-tension strengths of pinned joints. For this purpose, the specimens were tested to find first failure and final failure load. In addition, by using finite element code PDNLPIN, a static progressive failure analysis was performed. The effect of the material non-linearity was taken into account on the mathematical forms. Comparisons were made between the test data and the results of the model and these showed good agreements.