Scale Effect on Impact Performance of Unidirectional Glass Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composite Laminates.

Yiou Shen,Bing Jiang,Yan Li

doi:10.3390/ma12081319

Abstract

As a result of the increasing use of glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) composites in engineering fields, the investigation of scale effect on impact performance for this kind of composite is essential for large scale structure design. The effects of scaling on the impact response of simply supported unidirectional GFRP were investigated through drop weight impact (DWI) tests in this study. Impact tests were undertaken over a wide range of energies to generate damages between barely visible and initiated penetration on four scale size GFRP laminates. The main impact responses including impact force, contact duration, displacement, energy absorption and damage area of scaled specimens were normalized to compare with the full-size specimen. It was found that the impact response of large sample with elastic deformation and small area of delamination can be predicted accurately according to a geometrical similar scaling law. Scale effect was found in the damage threshold force and absorbed energy of the laminates when significant internal damage occurs due to the microstructural effect becoming important in resisting impact force and absorbing impact energy. Moreover, the energy partition and effective stiffness were calculated according to the energy balance model to reveal the contribution of different modes of deformations on energy absorption for the GFRP laminates.

Highlights

As fiber reinforced composite materials are being more widely used in the aerospace industry, and fields like construction and yacht hulls, an on-going constant source of concern is the effect of foreign object impacts on their mechanical properties [1,2]
It can can be be clearly clearly seen seen that that increasing increasing the the impact impact energy energy leads leads to to the the enhancement enhancement of of impact impact force force and and contact contact duration thethe maximum impact forces are are strongly dependent on the durationfor forall allsize sizesamples
The scaling effect on the low-velocity impact response of unidirectional glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) laminates was investigated based on a geometry similar scaling law

Summary

Introduction

As fiber reinforced composite materials are being more widely used in the aerospace industry, and fields like construction and yacht hulls, an on-going constant source of concern is the effect of foreign object impacts on their mechanical properties [1,2]. Impact is a dynamic event, large deflections and membrane effects are usually significant during impact, which cause numerous damage modes, such as matrix cracking, delamination, and fiber fracture and so on. Due to the overall complexity of the impact problem, experimental data are needed to determine the impact response and resulting damage modes in particular material systems and structural geometries. It is necessary to be able to scale this response to real structures of interest [4,5,6]

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