Stress Distribution and Fracture Toughness of Underground Reinforced Plastic Pipe Composite

Abstract

Reinforced composite materials have many applications in the aerospace, marine, and petroleum industries. Glass fiber-reinforced pipes are of considerable importance as pressurized vessels, infrastructure materials, and petroleum wastewater pipelines. The stress intensity factor due to through-thickness discontinuities is a major parameter in fracture mechanics to understand the failure mechanisms in glass fiber-composite pipes. The stress intensity factor is calculated for a composite cylinder subjected to internal pressure using the linear extended finite element method based on the law of energy release evaluation of surface damage. The analytical model needs two material properties; they are the tensile strength and the fracture toughness; therefore, a standard tensile test was carried out on a standard specimen taken from the pipe’s wall thickness. Moreover, the compact tension test specimen was manufactured from the pipe’s wall thickness to obtain the fracture toughness. The average tensile strength was measured as 21.5 MPa with a standard deviation of 5.59 MPa, moreover, the average Young’s modulus was measured as 32.75 GPa with a standard deviation of 6.64 GPa. The fracture toughness was measured as 2322 (MPa m) with a standard deviation of 142.5 (MPa m), whereas the average surface release energy (GIC) was 153.6 kJ/m2 with a standard deviation of 22.53 kJ/m2. A valuable design equation was extracted from the finite element model to measure the effect of cracks on the hoop stress of the cylinder wall thickness based on a nonlinear model. Moreover, an acceptable equation was used to calculate the correction and shape factor of a cylinder with movable and unmovable through-thickness cracks. This study provides useful tools and guidance for the design and analysis of composite cylinders.