1. Enter appropriate numbers in the boxes,
2. enter your email address,
3. click on submit, and
4. wait for results to be returned to your email. (this will take about 20 seconds)

1. Web location of results: we090.html will be sent to your email address.
2. If your email does not provide direct email links, copy and paste the web address: http://www.jwave.vt.edu/output/we090_"unique date-time"/we090.html from the email into your web browser Location: window and look at this file to see if the job ran correctly.
3. If the job ran correctly you can now download files from your web browser to your computer for archiving (a 4.6Gbyte read/write optical disk is available for each student to use in the SMVC for archiving large simulation files).
4. If you submit the form "as-is", a sample of results has been archived in the directory: http://www.jwave.vt.edu/output/ARCHIVE_Examples_SAVE/wedge090_10-23-2000-8:35:41:442/
   Select we090.html to see a summary of the results.

As a summary the figures below shows the laminate stacking sequence, FEM grid, and stress distributions for this specific problem. Example of results shown below demonstrate how "Free-Edge" stresses are signficantly influenced by anisotropy and thermal loads.

Notice how the sigma-z and sigma-hz stresses are influenced by thermal ("THERM") conditions supperposed with the mechanical ("MECH") load case. These three stress distributions are significantly influenced by the combination of residual stresses caused by the thermal contraction at low temperatures, Delta-T=-100F, such that the debonding will most likely occur at the 0/90 interface and not the laminate midplane. NOTE: the sigma-z midplane stress distribution along the y/B axis can be compared with the classic Pipes & Pagano finite-difference numerical solution in Ref.[16], see Figure 3. In this problem it is not necessary to calculate the out-of-plane strain from Linear Elastic Laminated Plate Analysis (LELPA), since the objective here is to focus just on the stresses near the "Free-Edge" and normalize the sigma-z stress vs. y/b with respect to the out-of-plane strain, see Figure 3. Therefore an out-of-plane strain of 0.0100 was chosen instead of calculating this strain by LELPA. However the LELPA solution ( module05b) to this problem can be compared to the stresses predicted far from the "Free-Edge".

Figure 1. Schematic and FEM grid of a [0/90]_s laminate

Figure 2. Stresses in the 0 and 90 degree plies

Figure 3. Comparison with other numerical "Stress Free-Edge" solutions, Ref.[16]

Numbers provided in the NPIB (Network Programming Interface Builder) form below match this particular problem. Of course with the NPIB form a variety of other configurations are possible.

NOTE: We have provided a complete set of ELEMENT NUMBER GRIDS below so that the student can calculate stress distributions different from the three graphs shown above.