Abstract
It is difficult to analyze bending properties of Filament Winding Cylinders (FW Cylinders) because fibers are complicatedly wound and FW Cylinders are not composed of laminae. In this study, Finite Element Method (FEM) was proposed to evaluate the flexural rigidities of FW Cylinders with several winding angles, and the results of FEM analyses were compared with results of 3-point bending tests. As a result, both results of FEM analyses and experiments were quantitatively agreed to each other. And it was found that flexural rigidities of FW Cylinders which were made with small winding angles became large values, but large deformation occurred on the cross-section at the central loading point by bending load, especially for thin wall FW Cylinders. Moreover, it became clear that flexural rigidities were largely influenced by the thickness of FW Cylinders.
