Effect of Fiber Orientation and Ply-Stacking Sequence on Buckling Behaviour of Basalt/Epoxy and Basalt-Carbon/Epoxy Composite Laminates

Composite materials are materials that are made of two or more constituents. Each constituent has distinct properties. The two main constituents are reinforcement and matrix. Recently, the use of composite materials has increased rapidly due to their excellent mechanical properties such as high strength, low density, corrosion and fatigue resistance. Among the factors that affect the strength of composite materials are the mechanical properties of the reinforcement and matrix, orientation of the reinforcement and ply stacking sequence of the composite laminate. The main disadvantage of most of the reinforcement fibers such as carbon fiber and glass fiber is the high cost. Basalt fiber is a potential replacement for those materials as a reinforcement material. Basalt fiber showed mechanical properties similar to the
mechanical properties of glass fiber but at affordable cost. The aims of this study are to investigate the effect of fiber orientation and ply-stacking sequence on the buckling behaviour of a symmetric basalt/epoxy and basalt-carbon/epoxy composite laminates using nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) and experimentally. The effect of fiber orientation on the critical buckling load on basalt/epoxy was studied using four-layer symmetric laminated plate using the following orientations: [θ/90]