Stress and strength analysis of composite joints using direct boundary element method

In this paper, the stress distribution and the strength of bolted joints of orthotropic composite plates under uniform loading are investigated. A direct boundary element method with quadratic isoparametric elements in conjunction with a fundamental solution derived by Rizzo and Shippy¹ is used. Plates with rigid bolts are treated as two-dimensional plane stress problems, and the bolt size is considered to be identical to the hole dimension. The prediction of the laminate strength is based on the Yamada-Sun² failure criterion. Some numerical results for various edge distances and material properties are presented for illustrative purposes.