Mechanical responses of a fiberglass flexible pipe subject to tension & internal pressure

Composite structures, such as the fiberglass reinforced structure studied in this paper, have been normally treated in previous research as homogeneous anisotropic laminated plates regarding the investigation of their mechanical properties. Throughout this paper, this specific structure is considered in a different way in which the fiberglass and polyethylene matrix are treated separately. By using the proposed method, the material plasticity of polyethylene and the fracture stress of the fiberglass can be taken into account, and thus the fracture of the fiberglass inside the fiberglass reinforced flexible pipes(FGRFP) can be predicted. The mechanical behavior of FGRFP under two real-life main loadings(tension and internal pressure) is investigated by using analytical and numerical methods based on the proposed technique. Experiments are used to verify the results.