Is a thermoset with glassfiber isotropic?

[giamma109]

Hi to everybody,
I have a part made of thermoset with glass fiber, can I consider this material like an isotropic material to develop a FEM simulation?

Thks

[Jorgen]

It is difficult to answer that question without more information :confused:

If the shield is not exposed to large loads and you do not care that much about accuracy, then perhaps that is OK.

- Jorgen

[giamma109]

The loads are:

1) four tie rods with a pretension of about 5000N for each tie rod;
2) the belt pretension of about 200 N;
3) a packaging force of about 1000 N;

I need accuracy because I need to evaluate if the shield cracks or not....but I cannot have the orthotropic characteristics....

the material characteristics are:

E= at least 10000 N;
poissons ratio= 0.3;
tensile ultimate strength= 50 MPa;
compressive ultimate strength= 150 MPa;

I have a maximum principal stress of about 32 MPa and a minimum principal stress of about 95 MPa ( in compression of course).

[Jorgen]

The lack of advanced experimental data related to the anisotropic behavior suggests that you are limited to isotropic linear elasticity in your solution approach. Additional experiments would be needed in order to validate the approach.