REPORT ON CHARACTERISTICS OF ADVANCED COMPOSITE MATERIALS E 3.

4AE

Submitted By: Likith Krishnappa G1303051C School Of Mechanical and Aerospace

Introduction:
Composites are one of the most widely used materials because of their adaptability to different situations and the relative ease of combination with other materials to serve specific purposes and exhibit desirable properties because of which their use in the aerospace

industry has increased dramatically since the 1970s. The performance advantages associated with the reduction of weight is the main reason for the development of advanced composites. During the earlier days aircrafts were typically made up of aluminium, steel and titanium but nowadays the use of composites in commercial aircrafts is gaining popularity due to its numerous advantages. For example the structure of Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 is made up of 53% and 50% of composite material respectively.

Material used in the Boeing 787

Composites are materials which are composed of at least two elements working together on a macroscopic level with recognisable interfaces in order to produce material properties which are different from the properties of the base materials. Generally, a composite material is composed of reinforcement (fibers, particles, flakes, and/or fillers) embedded in a matrix (polymers, metals, or ceramics). The matrix holds the reinforcement to form the desired shape while the reinforcement improves the overall mechanical properties of the matrix.

Composites can be classified into. 1. Fibers as the reinforcement (Fibrous Composites): a. Random fiber (short fiber) reinforced composites

b. Continuous fiber (long fiber) reinforced composites

2. Particles as the reinforcement (Particulate composites):

3. Flat flakes as the reinforcement (Flake composites):

4. Fillers as the reinforcement (Filler composites):

Due to the wide range of applications it becomes necessary for us to carry out tests such as tension test, shear test and so on to determine the characteristics of composite materials. In our experiments we make use of long fibre reinforced composites wherein 3 composite specimens with orientation angles of 0-900, 30-600 and 45-450 are studied. Depending upon the orientation of fibres in a composite material its strength and stiffness will vary.

Objectives:
The primary objective of the experiment is to determine tensile strength and stiffness of individual lamina with different fibre orientation. The secondary objectives were to 1. Appreciate the importance of geometry of the specimen during testing. 2. Gain knowledge about the stress strain behaviour of composites 3. Study the influence of fibre orientation on stiffness 4. Study the relationship between the fibre orientation and ultimate tensile strength and 5. To understand the different modes of failure of composite for different fibre orientation.

Theory:
The tensile test also called as tension test is the fundamental test which is conducted on every material to determine its strength. The results from the test will directly give us ultimate tensile strength, maximum elongation and reduction in cross sectional area. There are two types of tensile testing namely uniaxial and biaxial tensile testing. Uniaxial tensile testing is most commonly used for obtaining the mechanical characteristics of isotropic materials whereas, biaxial tensile testing is used for anisotropic materials.

Specimen: The tensile test specimen is standardized and will usually consist of 2 shoulders and a gauge section in between. The shoulder sections are large so that they can be easily gripped whereas the gauge section is thin so that deformation and failure can occur in this region. There are basically two kinds of specimens which are used to carry out the tensile test i.e. dog boned tensile specimen and straight sided specimen with tapered tabs.

Dog bone shaped specimen

Straight sided specimen with tapered bars

Test: The test specimen is subjected to increasing uniaxial loading during which there will be elongation in the gauge section. The resulting output from such a test is recorded as load versus displacement/elongation and can be graphically displayed as a load versus elongation curve. Load versus elongation curve is then converted to engineering-stress versus engineering-strain curve to evaluate the tensile properties of materials. Very often engineering-stress versus engineering-strain curves need to be converted to true-stress versus true-strain curves. This can be done using the following

Expressions:

Where

= True stress N/m2 P = load applied (N)

A = instantaneous area m2 = true strain = engineering strain The tensile properties that can be obtained from the stress-strain curves are yield strength, tensile strength, fracture strength, percent total elongation, uniform elongation, strain hardening exponent, modulus of resilience, and modulus of toughness.

Results and Discussions:

Calculations:
Sl Name no 1 2 3 0-90 30-60 45-45 Crosshead speed(mm/ min) 2 2 2 Max stress(MPa) 691.75 66.99 62.37 Elongation Modulus of Initial % Elasticity area (GPa) (mm2) 2.99 2.8 3.8 23.0583 2.3925 1.68567 3.5456 3.4568 3.1987 Final area (mm2) 3.3729 3.3063 3.1058 % reduction in area 4.8 4.34 2.904

Data given 0-90 30-60 45-45 Thickness (mm) 0.32 0.29 0.29 Width (mm) 11.08 11.92 11.03 Gauge length (mm) 85.27 86.83 80

Youngs Modulus Calculation: For 0-90 CFRP E= = = 23.0583 GPa

Initial Area A = b x t = 11.08 x 0.32 = 3.5456 mm2

Final Area A1l1 = A2l2 l2 = (1+) l1 = (1+0.0299)*85.27 = 87.819 Therefore, A2 = = = 3.3729 mm2

Similarly calculations are done for 30-60 and 45-45 orientation and are tabulated in the tabular column.

Comparison of Mechanical Properties:

From, the calculations it is seen that under uniaxial loading the fibres which are oriented along 0-900 has a greater tensile strength when compared to the other two, this is due to the fact that in the case of 0-900 CFRP, there are fibres present in the direction on the applied load and the load is directly transferred to the fibres hence, it can withstand more load. At the same time it is also observed that 0-900 orientation has yield point at a lower stain rate which means the deformation that it can undergo without causing permanent deformation is also minimum when compared to the other two types. From the graph, we see that the stress increases and once ultimate strength is reached suddenly failure occurs which indicates that the composite material having 0-900 fibre orientation behaves as a brittle material. It can also be observed that 45-450 and 30-600 have lesser tensile strength as the load applied are transferred to the fibres through shear. Since the fibre with 0-900 orientation has maximum tensile strength and minimum strain rate when compared to the other two, the youngs modulus will also be greater when compared to other two ( i.e. 45-450 and 30-600 has youngs modulus of 1.68 and 2.39 MPa respectively) as youngs modulus is given by E= which will be around 23.058 GPa

True Stress- Strain Curve:

When load is applied on a test specimen during tension test there will be elongation of specimen in the gauge section because of which the area does not remain constant. Hence the engineering stress that we calculate by assuming area to be constant is not accurate as the area changes continuously with the increasing length. In order to determine the stress accurately at a particular point we need to divide the load applied at that point by the instantaneous area at the particular point and the stress thus obtained is called as true stress. Similarly true strain is the sum of all the instantaneous engineering strain and is given as follows

Where

= True stress N/m2 P = load applied (N) A = instantaneous area m2 Where = true strain = engineering strain

Data point were extracted from the graph, for 0/90 ply orientation, obtained from the experiment and true stress and true strain were calculated using the formulae above. Engineering Strain 0.033372743 0.108662941 0.149505589 0.189810834 0.811210232 1.524183147 2.035898538 2.467003439 2.662940671 2.75983448 2.828729579 2.851730439 2.870754514 2.995432072 Engineering Stress 1.332760103 8.974634566 17.83104041 29.20249355 201.0533104 384.3400688 509.5120378 611.9411006 654.9548581 681.4918315 679.0627687 651.4187446 602.3860705 18.89509888

True strain 0.03282796 0.103154731 0.139331927 0.173794332 0.593995258 0.925917504 1.110507439 1.243290659 1.298266287 1.324374935 1.342533045 1.348522512 1.353449453 1.385151727

True Stress 1.377237963 9.949844749 20.49688061 34.74544321 364.149813 970.1447244 1546.826851 2121.6019 2399.060787 2562.296486 2599.947708 2509.089407 2331.688602 75.49408408

Using these values the graphs were plotted,

From the graph we can see that the true stress shoots up rapidly when compared to the engineering stress for the same strain. This is because true stress takes instantaneous area into consideration which keeps decreasing as the specimen elongates (V= Al, volume remains constant, l is increasing therefore A has to decrease) since the area decreases and true stress is given by load/ instantaneous area, it shoots up rapidly.

Observations about Modes of Failure and Fracture Region

0-900 CFRP It can be seen from the image that that fibres of 0-900 CRP on both sides of the dog bone gave up simultaneously because of which the gauge section is completely separated from the shoulder section. The crack propagates in the direction perpendicular to the applied load. In this case, the fibres which are oriented along the loading direction bear the load and transmit it to the fibres oriented at 90o to the loading direction. This causes failure due to delamination of the fibres oriented at 90o to the loading direction. Also, this orientation of fibres can withstand a much higher stress since all the load is borne by the fibres along the loading direction. Furthermore, it also indicates that the tensile strength of the fibres is extremely high.

30-600 CFRP In this case the fracture occurs at an angle of 600 to the applied load as the load bearing capacity in the direction of 300 is greater when compared to 600. The loads are transferred through shear. Though the specimen has a high resistance against tensile stress but easily succumbs as shear sets in. This fracture is of a ductile nature

45-450 CFRP Even in this case fracture occurs in the gauge section and this can be attributed to the symmetry of the fibre orientation with the loading direction. The failure is due to the shear load transfer that takes place and when it exceeds the maximum stress bearing capability capacity of the specimen, failure occurs. The specimen cannot handle shear stress as effectively as it handles the direct stress because of which it fails. The fracture in the specimen resemble a tear in the woven composite

References:
1. Stress strain curves, David Roy lance, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, August 23, 2001. 2. A course in composite materials. Tape 10-11, Experimental characterization of Composite materials [video-recording], University of Delaware, Centre for Composite Materials, 1987. (E502263 Media Resource Library) 3. Adams Donald F., Carlson Leif A., Pipes R. Byron, Experimental Characterization Of Advanced Composite Materials, (e-book) 3rd Edition, CRC Press, 2003. (XX348983.1) 4. Baker, A.A., Dutton S., Kelly D., Composite Materials for Aircraft Structures, Reston VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., 2004. (TL699.C57C737) 5. Jones R.M., Mechanics of composite materials, 2nd edition, Taylor & Francis, Inc., 1999. (TA418.9 C6J78)