Investigation on the Mechanical Properties of SMA/GF/Epoxy Hybrid Composite Laminates: Flexural, Impact, and Interfacial Shear Performance.

Shicheng Zhao,Bin Yang,Xiaoyu Sun,Zhenqing Wang,Jianxin Teng

doi:10.3390/ma11020246

Abstract

In this article, hybrid composite laminates with shape memory alloy (SMA) and glass fiber (GF) as the reinforced phase, and epoxy resin as the host material, were manufactured by vacuum-assisted resin injection (VARI) processing. The SMA wires were embedded into the GF/epoxy composites with three kinds of modes. The effect of SMA content and the position on the flexural, low-velocity impact performance of the hybrid composite laminates was investigated. It was found that the bonding performance between the SMA wire and the host material is the key factor that determined the final overall performance of the hybrid composite laminates in both the static and dynamics tests. Based on these experimental phenomenon, we further carried out the fiber pull-out experiment to improve the interfacial shear strength between the SMA and epoxy resin. It was found that the interfacial performance could be enhanced significantly by adding nanoparticles in the interface phase.

Highlights

Laminated composite plates show increasing application in industry due to their high stiffness and strength-to-weight ratio
As common fiber-reinforced plastic composites (FRPs), shape memory alloy (SMA) composites are highly susceptible to internal damage, which is generally caused by external static and dynamic mechanical behaviors, such as the flexing, fatigue, and the low-velocity impact on composite structures [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
The results showed that the flexural rigidity of SMA/epoxy composites increases owing to the addition of SMA fillers

Summary

Introduction

Laminated composite plates show increasing application in industry due to their high stiffness and strength-to-weight ratio. Embedding SMA actuators into polymer matrix composites could form SMA composites. This material is a new type of smart hybrid composite structure. As common fiber-reinforced plastic composites (FRPs), SMA composites are highly susceptible to internal damage, which is generally caused by external static and dynamic mechanical behaviors, such as the flexing, fatigue, and the low-velocity impact on composite structures [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. It is valuable to investigate the static and dynamic mechanical performances of SMA-based hybrid composites to expand their application scopes

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Methods

Conclusion