Tensile behaviour of hybrid composites between glass and short carbon fibres

Abstract

This paper presents the tensile behaviours of the hybrid composites consisting of short carbon and synthetic fibres in the form of chopped strand mat glass (CSM) and woven glass. The short carbon fibre used in this study represents the discontinuous carbon fibre tows of the recycled carbon fibre with short fibre tows. All the specimens were fabricated using vacuum infusion process with epoxy resin as the matrix and the tensile test was carried out in accordance withthe ASTM D3039. In total, six different configurations of specimens have been examined comprising the non-hybrid, aligned hybrid and non-aligned hybrid specimens. From the tests, the aligned hybrid specimens show a significant improvement in the tensile properties such as tensile modulus (up to 99%), toughness modulus (more than 10%) and ultimate tensile stress (up to 59.9%) over the non-hybrid composites. The aligned hybrid composites also exhibit a non-linear pseudo-ductile response before failure compared to the catastrophic brittle failure of the non-hybrid and non-aligned hybrid composites.