The use of fiber-reinforced polymer composites (FRPCs), due to their excellent
mechanical and geometrical properties, namely high strength to weight ratio and ease of
manufacturing, has gained a great deal of attention in many industries such as aerospace,
defense, marine to name but a few. Currently, the most applicable FRPC laminates are
fabricated with thermosetting (TS) organic resins, which exhibit great mechanical properties
with a medium curing temperature range. Nonetheless, these TS-based laminates have the
significant disadvantage of poor out-of-plane properties, as they exhibit brittle behavior that
can increase the susceptibility of delamination, especially in impact applications. In recent
years, the requirements for: material recyclability, high impact resistance,...[
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The use of fiber-reinforced polymer composites (FRPCs), due to their excellent
mechanical and geometrical properties, namely high strength to weight ratio and ease of
manufacturing, has gained a great deal of attention in many industries such as aerospace,
defense, marine to name but a few. Currently, the most applicable FRPC laminates are
fabricated with thermosetting (TS) organic resins, which exhibit great mechanical properties
with a medium curing temperature range. Nonetheless, these TS-based laminates have the
significant disadvantage of poor out-of-plane properties, as they exhibit brittle behavior that
can increase the susceptibility of delamination, especially in impact applications. In recent
years, the requirements for: material recyclability, high impact resistance, good vibration
dampening characteristics, higher fracture toughness, and post formability, prompted the
development of thermoplastic (TP) FRPC laminates.
FRPC laminates with traditional TP resins, namely PEEK, Cyclic Butylene Terephthalate,
Polyurethanes, require high processing temperature and costly equipment. As a result,
compared to TS resins, they are rarely used. Recently, Arkema company was able to introduce
Elium
® resin (a reactive methyl methacrylate (MMA) liquid TP resin), which can cure at room
temperature, and moreover, is suitable for vacuum-assisted resin infusion (VARI). Considering
this, in this study, FRPCs consisting plain weave ultra-high molecule weight polyethylene
(UHMWPE) fiber, plain weave carbon fiber, and their hybrid systems with different stacking
sequence are fabricated by VARI at ambient temperature to introduce novel TP FRPC
laminates. Furthermore, a new generation of TP fiber metal laminates (FMLs) is proposed in
this study which can be manufactured at room temperature. For this, titanium alloy sheets (Ti-6Al-4V) are used for fabricating hybrid titanium composite laminates (HTCLs). HTCLs have
shown to enjoy better mechanical properties when compared to traditional FMLs and FRPCs,
especially in the aeronautical, marine, military, and offshore applications both at room and
elevated temperatures as well as harsh environmental conditions. They are outstanding in terms
of stiffness, yield stress, fatigue, and high-velocity impact properties; however, there are some
challenges regarding their fabrication, surface treatment, and mechanical properties. As a
result, Ti-6Al-4V sheets are used to fabricate HTCLs with UHMWPE fabrics, carbon fabrics,
and their hybrid FRPC systems to introduce a new generation of TP FMLs manufactured at
room temperature to compare their mechanical properties with those of equivalent FRPC
laminates and traditional FMLs in the literature. To investigate the feasibility of TP Elium
®
resin for fabricating TP structures, ASTM standard tests of tensile, compression, shear (both
intralaminar and interlaminar), flexural, and low-velocity impact (LVI) are conducted to
determine the mechanical properties of the newly developed FRPCs and HTCLs with the aim
of comparing the results with those of TS counterparts and also providing a more
comprehensive data for theoretical analyses. In addition, fractographic analyses are performed
to have a better understanding of the behavior of those new TP laminates. In addition to
experimental investigations, the mechanics of structure genome (MSG) and a finite element
(FE)-based micromechanics approaches are conducted to evaluate the effective mechanical
properties of the TP FRPC laminates. For this end, through a two-step and the asymptotic
homogenization approach, elastic properties of FRPC laminates are computed, which are
compared with those obtained from experimental tests. Afterward, MSG and the commercial
finite element code ABAQUS are combined to simulate the low-velocity impact behavior of
the aforementioned laminates.
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