Investigating polyethersulfone interleaved Glass/Carbon hybrid composite under impact and its comparison with GLARE

Fotouhi, Sakineh; Clamp, Joseph; Bolouri, Amir; Pozegic, Thomas R.; Fotouhi, Mohamad

Abstract

A tough polyethersulfone (PES) membrane was utilized as a novel reinforcement to improve impact performance of a carbon/glass hybrid composite. The hybrid composite was made of a glass fibre/epoxy block that was sandwiched between two carbon fibre/epoxy blocks. The PES reinforced hybrid composite was compared with an unmodified hybrid composite and a glass reinforced aluminium (GLARE) laminate. During impact testing, results showed that incorporation of PES led to an increase in toughness with a reduction in damage propagation in the investigated composite panels. Furthermore, the results showed that for low impact energy levels (6 J, 12 J and 18 J), the addition of the PES membrane reduced the area of damage by an average of 67%, compared to the virgin laminate. By increasing the impact energy level (24 J and 32 J), fibre breakage was the dominant failure mode and the PES had a negligible effect on the impact performance. A comparable load bearing performance was observed with the hybrid composites and the GLARE laminate for the low energy levels (6 J, 12 J and 18 J). However, the GLARE laminate had a better performance during high energy impacts (24 J and 32 J), due to the high ductility of the aluminium plates.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 26, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jul 27, 2019
• Publication Date: Oct 15, 2019
• Deposit Date: Aug 1, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 28, 2020
• Journal: Composite Structures
• Print ISSN: 0263-8223
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 226
• Pages: 111268
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2019.111268
• Keywords: Interleaving; Glass/Carbon hybrids; Impact; GLARE; PES
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1843696
• Contract Date: Aug 1, 2019