An Investigation on Failure and Fracture Behavior of Environmentally Conditioned Fibre Reinforced Polymeric Composites

Abstract

At the present time, the use of composite materials for engineering applications has widely spread, replacing other more common and conventional materials (i.e. steel), thanks to their interesting weight ratios. Different composite materials have been developed; considering fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composites. In light of their use as structural components, it is certainly very important to study their static and fatigue behavior. The components made up of FRP composites are exposed to temperature variations (thermal shock, thermal spike, low temperature environment, high and low temperature environment, humidity variations, UV radiation and often the combined exposure of these environments leads to more detrimental effect on the performance of the composites during fabrication, in-service time and storage. Further, the rate of loading has significant effects on the mechanical performance of FRP’s. Another important aspect is to study the effect of addition of different nano fillers that alters the thermodynamic properties of the interface/interphase. The investigations in the study deals with mechanical behavior of the FRP composites exposed to aforesaid environments and loading rates. Also, different nano-fillers are used in the composites to enhance the strength and stiffness of the materials to better withstand in different harsh and hostile environments. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) was carried out to know the main cause of fractures that induces different morphologies. The in-service temperature of the FRP composite was measured using TMDSC (temperature modulated differential scanning calorimetry). Furthermore, dynamic mechanical thermal analyser (DMTA) was used to correlate the mechanical and thermo-mechanical response of the FRP composites. Furthermore, research is needed to characterize the interfaces in micro-scale and also by suitable modelling and simulation to explore the tailorability of the interfaces for making these composite materials sustainable and reliable at different service environments.