Particle Erosion Behavior of Unidirectional CF and GF Hybrid Fiber-Reinforced Plastic Composites

Abstract

Unidirectional carbon fiber- or glass fiber- reinforced composites as structure materials have wide applications in many industries. In order to combine the advantages of these two fibers, both carbon fiber and glass fiber are employed as reinforcing elements in single unsaturated polyester resin, and hybrid composites are formed. In this study, the erosion behavior of CF/GFRP and GF/CFRP were investigated at different impact angles (15-90°) and compared with CFRP and GFRP on fiber orientation 90°. The results suggested that CF/GFRP was low erosion wear as compared to GF/CFRP. Scanning electron microscopy was used to characterize the morphology of eroded surfaces. The micrographs revealed that CF and GF were maintained their own erosion behavior in the hybrid composite materials as well in the neat FRP materials. The simple analytical approach was constructed to figure out the theoretic erosion behavior, which were compared to the experimental results. It was confirmed that the erosion behavior of the hybrid composite materials could be predicted by the proposed analytical approach.