Mechanical property and failure mechanism of 3D Carbon-Carbon braided composites bolted joints under unidirectional tensile loading

In this paper, the mechanical property and failure mechanism of Carbon-Carbon braided composites (C-Cs) bolted joints structure subjected to unidirectional tensile load were studied by the experimental method and numerical analysis. The braided C-Cs bolted joints with the single-bolt single-lap (SBS) and double-bolt single-lap (DBS) were tested. The dominant failure modes for both C-Cs SBS and DBS joint configurations were bearing failure and net-tension. Additionally, the finite element method (FEM) was utilized to study the mechanical property and failure mechanism of the joints. The FEM results have a good agreement with the test values. Parametrics studies were implemented by finite element (FE) analysis to classify the effects of geometric parameters including the joint width (W), edge distance (e) and the bolt pitch (p) on the SBS and DBS joint configurations. It can be found that present numerical model can be used to predict the experimental mechanical behaviors and failure modes of bolted C-Cs joints with different geometric parameters and joint configurations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.