Experimental investigation on the mechanical properties of glass fiber with perforated aluminum sheet reinforced epoxy composite

Abstract

The importance of composite has been increased for the weight reduction in aerospace, automobile and in other industries need various structures. In recent days, the hybrid and fiber metal laminate composite materials play the vital role due to its ingenious properties like ease of structure, strength to weight ratio and high strength. Instead using the aluminum as sheet, due to the easy availability and less cost, perforated aluminum sheets used of thickness 0.3 mm with circular holes of diameter 3 mm and pitch distance of 25 mm. In this work, the metal/fiber hybrid laminates were tested in four different layer stacking combination of glass fiber and aluminum sheet (A/G/G/A, G/A/A/G, Ap/G/G/Ap, G/Ap/Ap/G). The composite specimens were prepared by hand layup method. As per ASTM standards Tensile, Flexural and Impact specimens were fabricated and its properties were evaluated. The results revealed that fiber metal laminate G/Ap/Ap/G shows better tensile strength 71.01 Mpa and impact energy 5.3 Joules. While in flexural specimen, sample G/A/A/G exhibits better flexural strength of 23.08 MPa. From the experimental investigation, it has been concluded that the G/Ap/Ap/G fiber metal laminate have better mechanical properties like tensile and impact strength along with approximately 30% reduction of weight.