This paper deals with acquisition of the material properties of the thermosetting plastic reinforced with various laminating angles of carbon fibers in order to apply to structural analysis of steering system components.
The laminating carbon composites are manufactured as stacking uni-direction carbon prepreg with various fiber orientations from 0 to 90 degree and applying heat and pressure by hot press.
We evaluate the modulus and ultimate strength of the CFRP according to the fiber orientation through uniaxial tensile test (ASTM 3039). The composite material shows the strong anisotropic properties according to loading direction.
In order to describe the material behavior accurately, the anisotropic material behavior is numerically formulated and for the verification of analysis scheme which is applied in this paper, analysis results of uniaxial tension process of composite material with various fiber orientations are compared with that obtained from the experiments.
After that, finite element analyses for a component in column type steering system are carried out and the results are compared with the experimental result for compression test of the components.