Hygrothermal aging effect on the water diffusion in glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite: Experimental study and numerical simulation

Abstract

Understanding the water diffusion process in glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) is critical to bridging the gap between the long-term degradation performance of GFRP composite and the retained strength of glass fibers under water attack. In this study, the water diffusion in GFRP with consideration of defects is systematically investigated through experimental and simulation methods. The water diffusivity of GFRP decreased from 6.60 × 10−7 to 2.05 × 10−7 mm2/s as glass fiber volume fraction increased from 0 to 50.21%. In addition, the diffusivity increases slightly with the presence of voids, and significantly with matrix cracking, debonding and fiber erosion, while it is insensitive to fiber size. Furthermore, the square or hexagonal fiber arrangement models produce similar results to random fiber arrangements in the actual situation. GFRP water absorption curves are found to be underestimated and overestimated respectively for models without and with defects taken into consideration. Finally, the simplified and refined FE models are supposed to be employed to rapidly estimate the water absorption of GFRP composite.