Identification of the through-thickness properties of thick laminated tubes using the virtual fields method

This paper presents a method to determine the four through-thickness sti€nesses of thick laminated composites. Only one specimen submitted to one test is required. The procedure is based on a suitable use of the principle of virtual work with four independent virtual ®elds. This leads to a system of four linear equations where the through- thickness sti€nesses are the unknowns. The system is ®nally inverted to determine the sti€nesses. Finite element simulations have been carried out to validate the approach and to show its stability.