Experimental study on the damage characteristics of the stepped repaired fiber reinforced composites

Abstract

Stepped repair, scarf patch repair, and patch repair are important in terms of repair techniques. The composite plate repair process starts after damage zone determination either by the unaided eye or nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques. This study investigates design cases for the stepped repairs of damaged fiber-reinforced composite materials. Before preparing steps for repair, the material around the damage zone is removed. In the stepped repair, it needs extra care to ensure that the repair plies overlap each other properly in the cut. Different cases are performed considering different step sizes. 5, 10, and 15 mm step sizes are used. The damages are given to the produced fiber-reinforced composite laminates using the Quasi-static indentation (QSI) method. Using QSI high-velocity impact simulation can be done. To get damage characteristics well-known damage test method is issued. Different span-to-punch diameter ratio (SPR) values were also used to compare different damage sizes. As a result, High ratio strength recovery was obtained using the longer step size. Maximum penetration force was reduced by nearly % 6-7 and maximum stress reduction was obtained by nearly % 8-9 for the 15 mm step size repaired composites. Among the all cases, case-1 has the highest strength recovery and case-5 has the lowest. For SPR 2, The average ultimate force value of specimens repaired with case-1 was maintained at nearly 94%. For SPR 4, repairs carried out using case-1 maintain more than 95% of damage resistance.