Examples:

Note: In the following examples, each lamina has a thickness of 1 mm and material is AS4/3501-6 Epoxy from Soden et al [4].

Example 5.9: For the laminate in Example 5.2 (that is, ), calculate the laminate coefficients of thermal expansions.

Solution: This is a symmetric matrix. Hence, . A matrix is given as:

Now we have

Now we calculate effective thermal forces for fictitious thermal change of .

which gives,

The laminate coefficients of thermal expansion are calculated as