REVIEW ON IMPACT RESPONSE OF POLYMER COMPOSITES

Abstract

In recent times the use of composite materials is increasing rapidly. These composite materials find a lot of application in the aerospace sector and recently it is gaining momentum in the automobile sector as there is a need to reduce weight in order to improve performance. The composite material is chosen over alloys because it has low maintenance. As these composites are widely used in airplanes it is necessary to understand how they behave under different impacts such as low velocity, high velocity and hyper velocity. One of the major drawbacks in low-velocity impacts such as dropping of tools, bird impacts is that it causes internal damages which are not visible from outside and therefore can lead to catastrophic failure. Hypervelocity impact is necessary for aerospace sector wherein impact on satellite due to meteoroids is studied. In this review paper three kinds of composites namely Kevlar, glass and basalt fibre composites are taken into consideration which are most commonly used for impact application. These composites are impact tested at low and high velocity as well as hyper velocity in some cases. Kevlar composite is impacted at different temperature levels and the amount of energy absorbed is studied. Since the basalt fiber and glass fiber have similar properties, impact behavior and mechanical properties of glass fiber composites are studied with the addition of nanoclay and the limit of nanoclay to be added is also discussed in this paper