Reliability of fiber-reinforced composite laminate plates

Many engineering structures ranging from aircrafts, spacecrafts and submarines to civil structures, automobiles, trucks and rail vehicles, require less weight and more stiff and strong materials. As a result of these requirements, the use of composite materials has increased during the past decades. In fact during the past five years, we have witnessed exponential growth in research and field demonstrations of fiber-reinforced composites in civil engineering. Manufacturers and designers have now access to a wide range of composite materials. However, they face great problems with forecasting the reliability of composites materials. Due to the differences among the properties of materials used for composites, manufacturing processes, load combinations, and types of environment, the prediction of reliability of composites is a very complex task. In this study, the reliability of fiber-reinforced composite laminate plates under random loads is investigated. The background of the problem is defined, the failure criterion chosen is presented, and the probability of failure is computed by Monte Carlo simulation.