Mechanical properties of composites made from locally manufactured carbon fabrics and the composites produced from air-textured glass yarns

Abstract

Composite materials have a wide range of applications in structural components because of their high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios. However, the most crucial and common life-restricting crack growth mode in laminated composites i.e. delamination is of great concern. Air jet texturing was selected to provide a small amount of bulk to the glass yarn. The purpose was to provide more surface contact between the fibres and resin and also to increase the adhesion between the neighbouring layers. These were expected to enhance the resistance to delamination in the woven glass composites. The development and characterisation of core-and-effect textured glass yarns was presented in the previous paper. This paper describes the comparison of the mechanical properties of composites produced from air-textured glass yarns and the composites made from locally manufactured carbon fabrics. The tensile, flexure and inter-laminar shear strength (ILSS) were compared and it was observed that although glass fibres are inferior to carbon fibres in terms of mechanical properties however, the flexure strength and ILSS of glass based composites increases after texturing and were found closer to the properties of carbon based composites.