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lengould
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I'm hoping someone could give me a quick feasibility evaluation of an idea, as I don't have access to a lot of engineering texts or money to hire the work. What I'm looking for is a means to calculate the mechanical load-carrying ability of a large diameter very thin wall composite tube or pipe.
Specifically a pipe fabricated from carbon fiber composite and where the primary design criterion is that the walls be capable of containing a pressure of 165 kpa guage. By my calculations, using eg. Panex PX35FBUDO150 unidir carbon fiber mat, 3.80 gpa, a 4:1 safety factor, a 30 degree winding angle and 60% fiber-to-resin ratio, the wall thickness for a 4.5 meter diameter tube would be 0.75 mm based on the hoop stress. The resulting tube would weigh 19.5 kg/meter.
My question then is, for a 240 meter long tube such as this, what sort of (mechanical loading could safely support)/(additional structural support requirement) as a beam supported at it's ends and the load suspended from the centre of the length, or how can I calculate that. Every formula I've found so far depends on a "given" modulus based on the details of tube diameter and wall thickness of industry standard metal tube sections, which is really of no help in this problem.
Thanks
Specifically a pipe fabricated from carbon fiber composite and where the primary design criterion is that the walls be capable of containing a pressure of 165 kpa guage. By my calculations, using eg. Panex PX35FBUDO150 unidir carbon fiber mat, 3.80 gpa, a 4:1 safety factor, a 30 degree winding angle and 60% fiber-to-resin ratio, the wall thickness for a 4.5 meter diameter tube would be 0.75 mm based on the hoop stress. The resulting tube would weigh 19.5 kg/meter.
My question then is, for a 240 meter long tube such as this, what sort of (mechanical loading could safely support)/(additional structural support requirement) as a beam supported at it's ends and the load suspended from the centre of the length, or how can I calculate that. Every formula I've found so far depends on a "given" modulus based on the details of tube diameter and wall thickness of industry standard metal tube sections, which is really of no help in this problem.
Thanks