Correlation of tensile and bending strength of composites with a circular hole

While significant studies have been conducted on composites containing a circular or an elliptic hole under tensile loading, few investigations have been reported on notched composites under bending due to the complex nature of the problem. In this paper, a correlation of strengths of orthotropic plates containing a circular hole under tension and bending has been proposed based on Lekhnitskii's solutions for infinite width plates. Finite element analysis has been performed to verify the theoretical correlation Uniaxial tension and four-point bending tests have also been conducted an Scotchply samples with circular holes of various sizes. A good agreement has been observed among the theoretical, FEA, and experimental results.