Compressive behaviour of filament wound steel/carbon hybrid composites tube

Abstract

Fibre composites have been introduced in the automotive and aerospace applications due to their strength to weight ratio advantage to replace traditional engineering materials. However, due to automotive occupants' safety risks during collision, numerous studies have been done by researchers on the energy absorption capability of composites structures. Typically, advanced polymer composites have low specific energy absorption compared to traditional engineering materials due to low modulus and limited plastic behaviour. In this research, the effect of hybrid filament wound hexagonal tube made of high strength steel wire and carbon fibre/epoxy composites under compression was studied through laboratory testing. Two test samples, namely, carbon fibre composites (CCC) and carbon fibre/steel hybrid composites (CSC) hexagonal tubes were prepared using filament winding technique. The cured samples, then have cut to two different lengths, 40 mm and 45 mm for each respective sample. The results show that both CCC samples are able to absorb higher energy compared to CSC samples. However, in terms of specific energy absorption, the value for CSC samples are 9.37 % and 6.39 % higher than CCC samples for 40 mm and 45 mm sample length respectively. This indicates that the addition of metal is effective in increasing the energy absorption capability and strength to weight ratio of composites, which are an advantage in the automotive industry.