MECHANICAL BEHAVIOR OF COMPRESSON MOLDED HYBRID COMPOSITES

A major challenge for the composite engineers is to develop stiff lightweight structural materials supporting modern design concepts. Hybrid composites are the material produced by two or more types of fibrous reinforcement combined in a single polymeric matrix, which offer a great diversity of mechanical properties. The focus of this study was to investigate the mechanical behavior of various hybrid sandwiches, which combine continuous woven composite and different discontinuous reinforcements. The discontinuous reinforcements included sheet molding (SMC), bulk molding (BMC) compounds and the discontinuous platelets. The platelets were produced from the trim scrap obtained during conventional layup, which was mechanically chopped to provide a usable form of the compression molding compound. Hybrid sandwich configurations using different core materials exhibited improvements in flexural mechanical properties, while digital image correlation analysis revealed different damage propagation behavior in sandwich structures. Combination of delamination and interlaminar shear failure were observed in the sandwich structure, indicating various failure modes in these composite systems.

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