Fuzzy approach to the mechanics of fiber-reinforced composite materials

Fiber-reinforced composite materials have been used very widely and have emerged as a major class of structural materials in recent years. They are either used or being considered for use as substitutes for metals in many weight-critical components in aerospace and other industries. In most practical applications, the material parameters vary considerably and are subject to uncertainties, mainly due to the uncontrollable aspects associated with the manufacturing process. The probabilistic methods cannot be applied easily because the exact probability distributions of the uncertain parameters are not known. Also, in some situations, the parameters of a composite material are known only in linguistic form. Hence, fuzzy concepts are introduced to model the uncertainties encountered in composite materials, which may be described in uncertain terms or in imprecise/linguistic form as fuzzy parameters. When the basic fuzzy arithmetic computations, such as fuzzy addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and fuzzy square root and fuzzy trigonometry computations are used, different composite material mechanics expressions are explored, and the fuzzy analysis of fiber-reinforced composite material mechanics is presented. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the feasibility and applicability of the approach. Other types of uncertainties, such as interval and probabilistic parameters, can also be accommodated with the approach.