Composite Structures 9 (1988) 173-188

Poisson's Ratios in Glass Fibre Reinforced Plastics

P. D. Craig* and J. Summerscalest

Royal Naval EngineeringCollege, Manadon, Plymouth PL5 3AQ, UK

ABSTRACT
The characterisation of the mechanical properties of an orthotropic
composite material generally requires nine interdependent elastic constants:
three Young's moduli, three shear moduli and three Poisson's ratios. In
most papers it is the practice to quote only two orthogonal axial moduli, a
shear modulus and a Poisson's ratio in the plane of the laminate. However,
the value of Poisson's ratio is a function of the orientation of the loading axis
relative to the principal axis of the reinforcement fibres, both in and through
the plane of the laminate. In an earlier paper, the correlation of experimental
and theoretically predicted Poisson's ratios was reported around the angles
in the plane of the laminate. Both unidirectional and woven rovingfibreglass
panels were tested. Accurate prediction of Poisson's ratio was shown to be
critically dependent on the value of shear modulus used. This paper reports
an extension of the previous work to consider the through-plane properties
and will examine the results in the context of the Lempriere constraints.

1 INTRODUCTION
Anisotropic materials possess properties which are dependent on the
direction in the material. In order to present a generalised H o o k e ' s law it

will be assumed that the material is homogeneous. The stress and strain can
*Currently serving aboard HMS Dryad.
t Present address: Advanced Composites Manufacturing Centre, Plymouth Polytechnic,
Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, UK.
173
1988 Controller, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London

174

P. l). Craig, J. Surnmerscales

be specified by second-rank tensors, with all components of the strain

linearly related to all components of the applied stresses. The generalised
H o o k e ' s law may be written as:
~o = S j r k ~

(1)

w h e r e subscripts i, j, k, l may each be any of the integers l(x-direction),

2(y-direction) and 3(z-direction). Normally the 1-direction is aligned with
the fibres of a unidirectional composite and the 3-direction is the thickness of
the laminate. Sijkt form a fourth-rank tensor and are termed the material
compliances, and e~i and o-kt are the second-rank mathematical tensors for
strain and stress, respectively. Similarly the stress--strain tensor is given by:
(2)

~rij = Cokl~kt

where Cijkt are referred to as the material stiffnesses, or the terms of the
m o d u l u s tensor.
Cijk~ contains 81 t e r m s (34). From the definitions of the components of the
stress and strain tensors the number of independent terms reduces to 36
because:
(3)

Cabcd = Cabdc = Cbacd, e t c .

The relationship between stress and strain tensors can be defined using
matrices, with the four tensor suffices reduced to two matrix suffices
according to:
Tensor:
Matrix:

11
1

22
2

33
3

12
6

13
5

21
6

23
4

31
5

32
4

Factors of 2 are also introduced to cater for the difference between

tensorial and engineering strains:
C,jk~ = Cmn when both m and n lie between 1 and 3
2C~jkt = Cmn when either m or n lies between 4 and 6
4Cokt = Cmn when both m and n lie between 4 and 6

As an example the matrix component C45 will be equivalent to the tensor

components 4C2331,463213, etc. The tensor equations may thus be contracted

to matrix and vector operations, in engineering strains rather than in
mathematical strains:
ei = S~/~rj

(4)
(/,j =

~r,-- C~e~

L,2 . . . .

6)

(5)

Poisson's ratios in glassfibre reinforced plastics

175

The C 0 matrix still contains 36 terms, but due to symmetry only 21 of these
are independent, and Maxwell's reciprocal theorem further reduces this
n u m b e r to nine independent terms for a material with three mutually
perpendicular planes of symmetry. Such a material is referred to as
orthogonal anisotropic, or more simply 'orthotropic'. Normally the Cq
matrix is referred to the planes of material symmetry so that the components
of the matrix are aligned with the principal directions of the material. In
orthotropic materials the f o r m of C 0 is identical to the form of S 0, thus:
CII

Cl3

C22 C23

633

C44

Cs5

C12

Symmetric

I/E,,
-Uel/E22

(6)

C~_

-Vl2/Ell -v,3/Eu
1/E22

-v23/E22

(I

-v31/E33

-v32/E33

1/G23

1/GI3

(I

I/G,2

So =

1/E33

(7)

where E is the Young's modulus, G is the shear modulus, and v o is the

Poisson's ratio which characterises the strain response in the j-direction
when strain is applied along the/-direction. It is implicit in the symmetry of
the matrices that:

This is a simple statement of Maxwell's reciprocal theorem (Ref. 1) which

states that the two strains must be equal if the two stresses are of equal
magnitude and sense.
In isotropic materials the shear modulus is defined in terms of the elastic
modulus, E, and Poisson's ratio, v, as:
E
G

2(1

v)

(9)

176

P. D. Craig, J, Summerscales

and in o r d e r that E and G are always positive, Poisson's ratio must always be
greater than - 1. Similarly the bulk modulus is defined as:
t( -

E
3(1 - 2 v )

(m)

and is positive only if E is positive and v is less than L Thus in an isotropic

material, the Poisson's ratio is restricted to the range
-l<v<- l
2

(11)

in o r d e r that shear or hydrostatic loading do not produce negative strain

energy. The sum of the work done by all stress components must be positive
in o r d e r to avoid the creation of energy. This latter condition provides a
thermodynamic constrainton the values of the elastic constants.
The constraint was generalised by Lempriere (Ref. 2) to include orthotropic materials. Both the stiffness and compliance matrices must be
positive-definite. Thus in terms of engineering constants:
El, E2, E3, G23, Gl3, G12 > 0

(12)

L e m p r i e r e ' s analysis yields the following results:

(1 --U23P32), (l -- P13U31), (1--V12P21) > 0

(13)

and
1 - u ~2u2~ - u~3u3~ - 1)23p32 - - 2b'21V32pl3 ~>( }

(14)

and from the condition of symmetry of compliances as applied to Poisson's

ratio (eqn (8)) it follows that the positive conditions for Poisson's ratio can
be expressed:

(15)
and
1

v21u23u13 < 2

(16)

This condition shows that all three Poisson's ratios cannot simultaneously
have large positive values, as their product must be less than one-half.

Poisson' s ratios in glass fibre reinforced plastics

177

H o w e v e r , if one is negative no restriction is placed on the other two.

Dickerson and Di Martino 3 have published data for cross-plied boron-epoxy
composites in which the Poisson's ratios range from 0.024 to 0.878 in the
orthotropic case and from -0.414 to 1.97 for a ___25 laminate. The reported
results satisfy the condition:

(17)
for all combinations of loading direction, and hence the Poisson's ratios are
reasonable within the one applicable constraint. Insufficient data exists for
full validation of the results.
G a r b e r 4 obtained a set of elastic property values for transversely isotropic
pyrolytic graphite:
E1 = E: = 34-5 GPa (5.0 Mpsi)
E3 =

10.3 GPa (1.5 Mpsi)

V12

pr

/J13 =

V21

-0"21

/J23 ~

1.00

Bert 5 analysed the values obtained by Garber in respect of the Lempriere

criteria and obtained:

-l<v<

(18)

-0.774 < v < 0.4

(19)

- 1.824 < v' < 1.824

(20)

0.35 < v' < 1.421

(21)

The most restrictive limits are inequalities (19) and (21), which are satisfied
by the actual values of v and u'. The unusual Poisson's ratios of pyrolytic
graphite are thus thermodynamically valid.
Jones and H e n n e m a n n 6 analysed the inequality (15) for the inplane values
of a boron/ep0xy material and obtained a limiting value of v~ <__3.162.
T h e r e was insufficient data to apply the full set of Lempriere criteria. The
baseline values in their study (of the effect of Poisson's ratio on buckling loads where rigorous prebuckling displacements are required) were
E l / E 2 = 10 and v~2 = 0.25. During the analysis the value of v was restricted
to the range 0-1-1-9. Poisson's ratio was found to increase with increasing
shear modulus.

178

f', D. Craig, J. Summerscales

A n important practical implication of the Lempriere criteria is that a zero

modulus will give a zero on the main diagonal of the stiffness matrix, and
hence inversion cannot be carried out during finite element analysis. ~
This paper continues a study reported by Gulley and Summerscales ~ who
examined the variation of Poisson's ratio with fibre orientation. Experimental and theoretically predicted values of Poisson's ratio were reported
a r o u n d the angles in the plane of the laminate. Accurate prediction of
Poisson's ratio was shown to be critically dependent on the value of shear
modulus used in classical laminate theory: '

P12

PLT-- ~

sin22~
+ 2PLT+ ELEr E] c ) G

(22)

where subscripts L and T represent the longitudinal (0 ) and transverse (90 )

directions and traditionally G = G,v. The nomenclature used is illustrated
by Fig. 1. The optimum correlation of theory and experiment was obtained
w h e n Huber's equation: ~0,~

\<'El t~2
G12 = 2(1 + \.";v~2x u2~)

(23)

was used at the 45 orientation of fibres to loading axis. The shear moduli can
easily be obtained from tensile tests with the use of appropriately positioned
strain gauges or extensometers. For the perfectly symmetric case eqn (23)
reduces to the isotropi equation as Et = E2 and ut2 = v2~. Figures 2 to 5
illustrate the variation of Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio for the
unidirectional panel (C1) and woven roving laminate panel (A2) tested in

T
z"

--"

~a

Fig. I. Nomenclatureused in thispaper.

Poisson's ratios in glass fibre reinforced plastics

179

2O

-16

2,0

/.,0

6,0

8.0

Ang!.e between toad and fibres [degrees]

Fig. 2. Variation of Young's modulus as loading axis rotates from reintorcement direction for
unidirectional panel, CI.

16

=~

e-

20

40

6,0

8,0

Angle" between toad and reference fibredirection

Fig. 3. Variation of Young's modulus as loading axis rotates from principal fibre direction for
the woven roving laminate panel, A2.

P. D. Craig, J. Summerscales

180

F o Experimental measurements
x Theoretica[ prediction using G~,,~o~
+ Theoreticat prediction us!nq 5~;
,

).2

-,%
+

2.0

4/)
.
6.0
Orientation

8D

Fig. 4. Variation of Poisson's ratio with orientation for unidirectional panel, C 1.

o Experimental measurements
x Theoreticat prediction using 6,2~so,
Theoreficat prediction using 6~T

0.6

~3

~,
t3..

+
+

+ +

~r
i

49r~entafi0690n
~

~.

+
i

8~)

Fig. 5. Variation of Poisson's ratio with orientation for the woven roving laminate panel, A2.

R e f . 8. T h e theoretical predictions of Poisson's ratios using b o t h GLT and

G~2~45o)are included in the figures.
T h r o u g h - t h e - t h i c k n e s s d a t a for the Poisson's ratio of T300/5208 graphite/
e p o x y l a m i n a t e s have b e e n p r e s e n t e d by Herakovich, 12w h o f o u n d no o t h e r
r e f e r e n c e s on the subject. A m i n i m u m value of - 0 . 2 1 was f o u n d for the
Poisson's ratio o f a [___25]s laminate at 25 (vxz) or 65 (v~z) to the reference
axis. This c o r r e s p o n d s to the reflection of the Poisson's ratio against angle
plot a b o u t the 45 orientation. H e r a k o v i c h does not present in-plane d a t a
for the l a m i n a t e s e x a m i n e d , a n d hence verification of the L e m p r i e r e criteria
is n o t possible.

Poisson's ratios in glass fibre reinforced plastics

181

In this paper the three orthogonal Poisson's ratios are obtained for the
same two panels tested by Gulley and Lempriere criteria are applied to the
results.

2 E X P E R I M E N T A L DETAILS
The results reported here were obtained from two fibreglass panels which
were manufactured by hand-lay-up at W & J Tod of Portland, Dorset. The
940 m m square panels were:
A2:12 layers of T B A ECK25 woven rovings (0o/90 ) in Crystic 625 TV
resin, and C1:13 layers of Fothergill and Harvey Yl19 unidirectional
rovings. Test specimens were cut from the panels at 10 intervals with
additional samples at 45 (11 orientations per quadrant). The nominal
dimensions for samples from panel A2 were 215/115 x 24 x 11 mm (sample

TABLE 1
Transducer Channels

Channel
30l
302
303
304
305
306

Description
Load cell, _+10 kN (2518-102/UK014)
Actuator, ___50mm movement (1340-1004)
Extensometer (R) 12.5 mm gauge length, _+5 mm m o v e m e n t (262[)-601/(193)
Extensometer (Y) 12.5 mm gauge length, _+2-5 mm m o v e m e n t (2620-602/116)
Extensometer (B) 10.0 mm gauge length, -4-I mm m o v e m e n t (2620-603/113)
Extensometer (G) 10.0 mm gauge length, -+ 1 mm movement (2620-603/118)

length/gauge length breadth width) and for samples from panel C1

were 300/200 26 11 mm. The surface of the specimen which was furthest
from the mould during fabrication was not machined flat to avoid damage to
the continuity of the reinforcements.
The specimens for u~2 and u~3 were loaded in tension, within the elastic
limit, in the R N E C Instron 8032 servo-hydraulic universal testing machine.
Jaw pressure of the hydraulic grips was 21 kPa (300 psi) and specimen
insertion in each grip was 50 mm. The actuator was positioned at the
mid-point of its travel to ensure optimum accuracy. Strains were monitored
using Instron extensometers as detailed above. All transducer channels
were logged by a Compulog Two data acquisition system through the
Instron I/O card (type A1203-1122), using Fortran II software running
under F O D O S . The transducer channels are listed in Table 1.

182

I'. D. Craig, Y. Summerscales

The extensometer mounted on the rough back face of the specimen was
carefully positioned in shallow parallel machined grooves. The knife edges
of all extensometers were adhered to the surfaces using cyanoacrylate
adhesives, in order to avoid sliding of the points of contact. R and Y are used
axially with B and G used transverse to the load axis.
To obtain values for v3, and/232 four layers of each material were cemented
together to form a 40 mm cube which could be loaded in compression. The
extensometers were mounted such that they did not cross an adhesive layer.
Extreme care was necessary to ensure exact parallelism between the loading
platens and the cube surfaces. The load was ramped from 0.1 to 4.0 kN to
obtain the stress-strain and extensometer values.

3 DISCUSSION
The experimental axial Young's moduli and Poisson's ratios were derived
from the linear portion of the stress-strain curve. The results are presented
in Table 2 for the unidirectional composites and in Table 3 for the woven
roving composites. In Table 3 the two orthogonal principal directions for the
elastic moduli do not comply with the general assumption of transverse
isotropy. A similar result for chopped strand mat and woven roving glass
fibre reinforced laminate has recently been reported by Naughton et al. 13
The alignment of the fibres with the nominal principal axis was checked
visually. The C1 panel was correctly aligned, but the A2 panel had 0
reinforcement rotated three degrees anticlockwise of the reference axis,
when viewed from the front face. All results in Table 3 have been corrected
to actual principal fibre orientation. The 90 fibres were correctly aligned in
the A2 panel. The A2 panel was very slightly bowed, necessitating great care
in the calculation of Young's modulus. The axial strain used in the
derivation of Young's modulus was the mean of the readings from the two
axial extensometers to eliminate bending effects. Only the initial linear
portion of the load-strain plot, before the limit of proportionality (LOP)
was used in calculating the elastic properties (Figs 2 and 3). The slight rise in
Young's modulus transverse to the principal fibre direction of the C1 panel is
attributed to the light weft used to hold the form of the unidirectional fabric.
In-plane Poisson's ratios were calculated from the experimental readings
from the two extensometers on the front (smooth) face of the tensile
specimens, using a least-squares straight line fit. Theoretical values of
Poisson's ratio were calculated using eqn (22), eqn (23) and the experimental values of Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio on the principal axes
(0, 90). A mean value of the experimental EL and ET was used for the axial
and transverse moduli of panel A2. Similarly a mean value of Poisson's ratio

Poisson's ratios in glass fibre reinforced plastics

~d

183

184

I'. l). ('raig, d. Suntmerscale.s

b~222

Poisson's ratios in glass fibre reinforced plastics

185

" U,, from ~LLey

x V~2 fromCraig
I V~,fromCraiq

0.6"i'~"
0.4L

0.;

2,0

Fig. 6. V a r i a t i o n

of

4.,0

Orientation*

Poisson'sratio With orientation

CI.

6,0

8,0

in two planes for the unidirectional panel,

Craig

" V~2 from GuItey

-~

x ~2from
.~_~~ fromCra
0
0

0.2

Fig.7.

Orientation*

Variation of Poisson's ratio with orientation in two planes for the woven
laminate panel,

A2.

roving

for the principal axes was calculated. Huber's formula (eqn (23)) was used to
calculate the shear modulus for all the specimens, as in Ref. 8.
Transverse Poisson's ratio were calculated from a through-plane extensometer mounted on the side of the test-piece and the mean value of axial
strain between the extensometers mounted on the front and back of the
specimen. Figures 6 and 7 show the variation of both in-plane and throughplane Poisson's ratio with the change of orientation between the loading axis
and the principal fibre direction in-the-plane of the laminate. A bold line
(somewhat arbitrarily placed) is used to indicate the trend in through-plane

186

P. D. Craig, J. Surnrnerscales

TABLE 4
Poisson's Ratio in All Three Planes--Verification of the Lempriere Criteria

vl2
v21
v13
v31
v23
v32
/~12
/221

//'31

/213
/223

Panel CI

(\. Ei/Ej)

0.308
0.123
0.354
0.124
(I-417
0.414

(1.606)
(0.623)
(1-687)
((I.593)
(1.051)
(0.952)
reed' med

UJ//

0.140
I). 109
t).408
(}.247
0-380
0.297

( \ E,IEj)

((I.942)
(1-061)
(1.285)
(0-778)
(1.364)
(0-733)

/f//~/O~

0.962
0.956
0.827
0.710
0.018
0"016
2(}-32
7.88
7-14
3.45

higfi

Indication of relative
magnitudes of v

/ ///
reed med

/)32

1 - v:2 v2:
1 -/213 v31
1 -/223/232
Inequality (14)
v21 v23/213
/212/232/231
El (GPa)
E2 (GPa)
E3 (GPa)
Glz (GPa)

Panel A2

0.985
0.899
(}.887
0-745
0.017
0'010
15.54
17.51
9.41
2.98

Plane of symmetry
shown shaded

limit is > 0
:limit is > 0
limit <.',

Poisson's ratio. The in-plane and through-plane Poisson's ratio can be seen
to vary out-of-phase in both cases. The peak-in-plane Poisson's ratio occurs
at around 30 for the unidirectional material and at around 45 for the woven
roving. The minima in through-plane Poisson's ratio occur at similar angles.
The Poisson's ratios on all three orthogonal material axes are presented in
Table 4 for both laminates. The plane of symmetry (shown shaded) has
relatively low values for v in the woven roving laminate and relatively high
values of v in the unidirectional roving laminate. These planes are the plane
of the fabric and the plane normal to the fibres, respectively. In general,
Poisson's ratio is high for contractions in the resin direction and is low when
fibres lie transverse to the loading direction.
Table 4 also includes the various inequalities which define Lempriere's
criteria for the thermodynamic constraint on Poisson's ratio. In all cases the
experimental values satisfy the criteria.

Poisson's ratios in glassfibre reinforced plastic's

187

T h e materials tested were far from ideal and defects included minor
warping, fibre misalignment, inhomogeneous microstructure and similar
problems associated with the method of fabrication. The results must thus
be regarded as indicative of the trends which should be expected and not as
accurate design data.

4 SUMMARY
Two glass-fibre laminates (unidirectional and bidirectional) were studied
experimentally to investigate Poisson's ratio in all planes. The variation of u
at various in-plane loading angles is reported for both in-plane and throughplane orientations. A full set of axial moduli and Poisson's ratio are presented
for the three orthogonal planes in the material. The values obtained
are shown to satisfy Lempriere's criteria which impose a thermodynamic
constraint.

REFERENCES
l. Hoff, N. J., The analysis of structures, John Wiley, New York, 1956, p. 373.
2. Lempriere, B. M., Poisson's ratio in orthotropic materials, A I A A Journal,
6(11) (1968) 2226-7.
3. Dickerson, E. O. and Di Martino, B., Off-axis strength and testing of
filamentary materials for aircraft application, lOth National Symposium,
SAMPE, San Diego, 9-11 November 1966, H23-H50.
4. Garber, A. M., Pyrolytic materials for thermal protection systems, Aerospace
Engineering, 22(1) (1963) 126-37.
5. Bert, C. W., Unusual Poisson's ratio of pyrolytic graphite, AIAA Journal, 7(9)
(1969) 1814--15.
6. Jones, R. M. and Hennemann, J. C. F., Effect of prebuckling deformations on
buckling of laminated composite circular cylindrical shells, AIAA Journal,
18(1) (1980) 110--15. ( A I A A Paper no. 78-516R.)
7. Jones, R. M. and Morgan, H. S., Analysis of linear stress strain behaviour of
fibre-reinforced composite materials, A I A A Journal, 15(12) (1977) 1669-76.
8. Gulley, T. J. and Summerscales, J., Poisson's ratios in glass fibre reinforced
plastics I, Proc. 15th Reinforced Plastics Congress, BPF-RPG, Nottingham,
17-19 September 1986, pp. 185--9.
9. Stavsky, Y. and Hoff, N. J., Mechanics of composite structures, In: Composite
engineering laminates (Dietz, A. G. H., ed.), Chapter 1, The M1T Press,
Cambridge, MA and London, 1969, pp. %12.
10. Huber, M. T., The theory of crosswise reinforced ferroconcrete slabs and its
application to various important constructional problems involving rectangular
slabs, Der Bauingenieur, 4(12) (1923) 354--60 and 4(13) (1923) 392-5.
11. Panc, V., Theories of elastic plates, Noordhoff International Publishing,
Netherlands, 1975.

188

P. D. Craig, J. Summerscales

12. Herakovich, C. T., Composite laminates with negative through-the-thickness

Poisson's ratios, VPI-E-84-10, April 1984. CCMS-84-01. NASA-CR-173681.
NTIS N84-27830.
13. Naughton, B. P., Panhuizen, F. and Vermuelen, A. C., The elastic properties
of chopped strand mat and woven roving in GR laminae, J. Reinforced Plastics
and Composites, 4(2) (1985) 195-204.