On the Mechanics of Bicomponent Fibers

This communication concerns the prediction of curvature in a bicomponent strip resulting from differential shrinkage of its components. It questions the physical basis for part of El-Shiekh's proposed correction of earlier analyses and indicates that Timoshenko's treatment contains similar inconsistencies if applied to large strain cases. For differential strains below 15r/i, corresponding to most bicomponent fibers produced commercially, the agreement between the two analyses is close and error introduced by flaws in the physical assumptions becomes negligible. However, it is necessary to use EI-Shiekh's base length correction where absolute shrinkage values of the separate fiber components are large, even though the differential shrinkage is small.