TITLE:
Plane Strain Fracture Behaviour of Fabric Reinforced Hybrid Composites under varied Notch Configurations
AUTHORS:
K. Mohamed Kaleemulla, B. Siddeswarappa
KEYWORDS:
Impact toughness, fracture toughness, glass fabric, textile satin fabric, ANOVA, Modeling.
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Minerals and Materials Characterization and Engineering,
Vol.8 No.6,
June
20,
2009
ABSTRACT: Utilization of fabric reinforced hybrid polymer composites has increased tremendously in
many engineering fields. The present investigation is an attempt on fabric-reinforced hybrid
composite laminates with different volume fractions of the constituent materials; epoxy resin,
plain-woven glass fabric, and textile satin fabric. Fracture toughness of a material has
immense importance in the determination of the resistance of the material to crack
propagation. Hence in this article, impact behaviour and fracture toughness of the laminates
were investigated as per ASTM-D256 standards. Specimen configuration includes selection
of different notch depths, fiber proportion and orientations. The fracture toughness has been
found to increase continuously with increased volumes of glass fabric and significantly
dependent on the notch size. Experimental results are validated using analysis of variance
(ANOVA) technique, and found that percentage contribution of glass content is
approximately 80%, while notch depth and orientation have contributed only 16%.