Abstract
Recent prediction on the heavy statistical correlation between the mechanical properties of fiber reinforced composite (FRP) raises new concerns on the accurate reliability evaluation of composite structures, but such statistical correlation still lacks experimental verification. In this work, an experimental methodology is proposed to determine the statistical correlation between mechanical properties of unidirectional FRP composite. A rectangular shaped carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) specimen with a circular hole is loaded by tension, and 3D digital image correlation (DIC) is employed to characterize the heterogeneous strain field around the hole. Virtual field method (VFM) is used to derive E11, E22, ν12, and G12 of specimens. Specimen configuration considering fiber angle and hole diameter is optimized to achieve accurate determination of correlation coefficients. Experimental results on the linear correlation coefficients between E11, E22, ν12, and G12 agree well with previous theoretical predictions.
Highlights
Fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) composite is intrinsically a multiphase and heterogeneous material, and significant uncertainty has been observed on its mechanical properties [1,2,3]
It can be seen that the mean values of the elastic properties generally agree well with Jeong and Shenoi [1] where tests are conducted following ASTM standards, though E22 and G12 derived by this study are around
An experimental methodology is proposed to determine the statistical correlation between mechanical properties of unidirectional FRP composite, by a combination of digital image correlation (DIC) and Virtual field method (VFM)
Summary
Fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) composite is intrinsically a multiphase and heterogeneous material, and significant uncertainty has been observed on its mechanical properties [1,2,3]. Recent theoretical studies by Shaw et al [12] suggest that ply mechanical properties would be statistically correlated, and Zhang et al [13,14,15] further demonstrate that the statistical correlation between ply in-plane elastic properties could heavily affect structure reliability. Knowledge, the theoretically predicted statistical correlation between ply mechanical properties has not been experimentally verified, and the statistics on the mechanical properties of fiber and matrix employed for the prediction of ply-scale statistical correlation include many assumptions. This raises a problem surrounding how much we can trust the statistical correlation predicted from micro-scale constituent properties. Conventional macro-scale test methods on measuring FRP mechanical properties suggested by (American Society for Testing and Materials) ASTM or (International Organization for Standardization) ISO [16,17,18,19] only provide a certain modulus for a test configuration or a specimen, Materials 2020, 13, 674; doi:10.3390/ma13030674 www.mdpi.com/journal/materials
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