The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the specimen geometries on the pin bearing strength of the angle ply carbon fiber reinforced composites. The effect of the edge distance and the specimen width on the pin bearing strength of angle ply CFRP composites are experimentally investigated in this paper. As results, the failure mode and pin bearing strength of mechanical joints turned out to depends on the stacking sequence and specimen geometries such as the edge distance and the specimen width. The higher pin bearing strength obtained for the angle ply CFRP composites is attributed to a combination of debonding, pull out, buckling and breakage of fiber and also the matrix cracking.

The pin bearing strength is one of the most important design parameters for mechanical joints composed of fiber reinforced composites. Thus the effect of the edge distance and the width of specimen on the pin-bearing strength of unidirectional CFRP composites were experimentally investigated in this paper. As results, the failure modes and the pin bearing strength of mechanical joints turned out to depend on the edge distance and also the width of specimen. The failure of specimen with low ratio of width to hole diameter was caused by the net tension from the hole boundary, on the other hand, the failure of specimen with low ratio of edge distance to hole diameter was caused by the shear-out. The bearing strength in case of the failure by shear-out was quite lower than that in case of failure by net tension.