A Review Of Rae Sponsored Work On The Compressive Behaviour Of Composite Materials

The Non-metallic Materials Division at RAE Farnborough has mounted a major programme of work to study the compressive behaviour of composite materials and seek improvements in compressive strength. This is being done by developing improved compressive test techniques, studying failure processes fractographically, investigating the effect of notches and impact damage and modelling behaviour mathematically to develop predictive capability. In this paper an overview of this work is presented, with critical results and conclusions, and references to fuller treatments are cited.