THE BEHAVIOR OF REPAIRED COMPOSITE DOMES SUBJECTED TO EXTERNAL-PRESSURE

Six hemispherical and four torispherical composite plastic domes reinforced with either carbon or E-glass woven fabrics or a combination of both have been tested under external pressure. The domes were prepared using male or female moulds and employed the hand lay-up/vacuum bag method for their manufacture. The domes were observed to fail either by buckling or as a result of material failure. Both modes of failure were usually located at the meridian having the minimum average thickness. These domes were then repaired using a recommended technique and retested. It has been shown that the integrity of the repaired zones was guaranteed and further damage to the domes during retesting moved to new locations usually corresponding to the areas of the new minimum average thickness meridian. Two computer programs based on finite difference and finite element methods were employed to predict the critical buckling or material failure loads. The theoretical predictions were shown to correlate very well with the experimental results.