Effect of Thermal Spike Conditioning on the Tensile Behavior of Glass/Epoxy Composites

Abstract

The impact of various environmental parameters are dreadful to structural integrity of FRP composites. In this paper we have experimentally investigated on the quasi static tensile behavior of glass/epoxy (GE) composite exposed to thermal spike environments. The specimens were thermally spiked to 50 °C, 100 °C, 150 °C, and 200 °C temperatures for a holding period of 5, 10, 15 and 20 minutes respectively. The tensile testing of the thermal spiked specimens were done at 1 mm/min loading rates. The experimental results reveals that the ultimate tensile strength (UTS) is increasing with increase in the holding time for all the thermal spike temperatures. During thermal spiking differential coefficient of thermal expansions and induced thermal stresses is a major cause in fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites. The interface behavior is strongly influenced by the existence and nature of residual stresses present in between fiber and matrix. Different failure patterns were observed for thermal spiked specimen tested at different holding time and temperature. Different fractured modes of failures were analysed using scanning electron microscope (SEM) for the thermal spiked GE composite. Temperature modulated differential scanning calorimetry (TMDSC) was performed to evaluate the glass transition temperature (Tg) of the GE composite.