Laminate theory based 2D curl model

Abstract

The laminate theory provides a method of analyzing the mechanics of multilayer composite laminates. With the appropriate definition of the load vector, the laminate theory can be extended to model curl resulting from different stages of web handling. The most direct application would be for predicting curl resulting from change in temperature or moisture content of a multilayer web. Other curl sources such as web lamination and curing/drying shrinkage can also be modeled if the load vectors are appropriately defined. This paper shows some applications of a laminate theory based 2D curl model for predicting web curl in both Machine Direction and Cross Direction. The results obtained from this model are validated by both Finite Element Analysis and Experimentation.