Evaluation of Interlaminar Toughness of Smart Laminate Composites: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Glass fiber-based composite materials are most popular nowadays in many industries such as aerospace, military, automobile, sports, etc. These materials have exotic mechanical properties and characteristics required for a structural component. Because of that, these materials are frequently and successfully used instead of other materials like steel, etc. In today’s manufacturing industry, the basic requirements for the material are toughness, hardness, and stiffness together so that they can serve human needs. It should also be noted that composite materials constitute two or more components in the form of lamina and after manufacturing we get a new kind of material. The properties of these materials may vary from either of the components. Although these composite materials have good mechanical properties like strength, stiffness, corrosive resistance, fatigue life, wear resistance, light in weight, very good thermal conductivity and isolation, etc. one of the major problems with these materials is weak in shear. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to improve the interlaminar shear strength of the reinforced polymer by using carbon nanotubes (CNT) embedded in the layers with epoxy. CNT has a diameter of 20 nm and length of 940 nm, concentration of 0.50 wt.% mixed with epoxy to enhance the interlaminar shear strength (ILSS) of the composite material. The experimental study shows that the reinforcement of CNT into structural material like glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) leads to improved shear strength of composites.