Thermal Shock and Thermal Fatigue on Delamination of Glass-fiber-reinforced Polymeric Composites

Abstract

Glass-fiber-reinforced unsaturated polyester and epoxy resin composites were exposed to 75°C temperature gradient thermal shock for ten times in different stages of conditioning times. The other lot of short-beam shear specimens were conditioned with a thermal shock of again 75°C temperature gradient for the different cycles. The three-point bend test was performed on the conditioned specimens to evaluate the value of interlaminar shear strength. These conditionings may induce matrix cracking because of large misfit strain. The present experiments aim to study the fiber-matrix debonding effect of thermal shock-thermal fatigue, post-curing hardening phenomena of thermal conditioning, and also the mechanical keying factor of sub-zero conditioning.