A predictive creep model for un-stitched and stitched woven composites

Previous studies have shown that woven carbon composites exhibit considerable creep even at ambient temperature, and that through-thickness stitching can significantly reduce the creep rate. This article presents a mechanistic model for quantifying the time-dependent creep of woven carbon fibre composites, assuming that the carbon fibres remain elastic and the matrix is linear visco-elastic. It is shown that the predictions of the model are in close agreement with experimental results for both unstitched and stitched woven carbon composites.