The leakage tightness and structural integrity are the two most important criteria that are considered in the design of bolted flanged joints; composite flanges are no exception. Although the current practice is to use existing design methods for metallic flanges in the design of FRP flanges, their ability to appropriately address the anisotropic behavior of composite flanges is of major concern. Several failures of such flanges has fostered new alternative to design composite flanges.
This paper assess the reliability of numerical modeling of FRP bolted joints based on isotropy and compares the results with anisotropic based numerical Finite Element (FE) modeling. Experimental data are included to support the findings and emphasis the importance of including anisotropy to predict stresses and strains in composite flanges.
