Radial compression of thin-walled variable-angle tow filament-wound composite cylinders, Part I: Manufacture, experimental, and computational analyses in the linear-elastic regime

This work presents a computational-experimental investigation into the radial compression behavior of thin-walled variable-angle tow filament-wound composite cylinders in the linear-elastic regime. The manufacturing details are outlined with the variable-angle configuration achieved by subdividing the cylinder into several annular regions, each with a constant fiber angle. The experiments aim to describe the mechanical behavior of these structures in terms of stiffness and to obtain strain fields using digital image correlation. Two sample types with the same diameter are studied: cylinders with lengths of 150 mm and 200 mm. For the 150 mm cylinders, strain fields are captured along the entire length, whereas, for the 200 mm cylinders, the region of interest is reduced to a single triangular subunit of the mosaic pattern. This approach allowed for the observation of both global and local strain field trends, with finite element model results compared to experimental data. The computational model was validated with good results, which were then used to simulate cases of cylinders with stress concentrators, which are investigated in Part II, predicting the onset of failure using Hashin’s failure criteria.