Title: Experimental investigation of hygrothermal ageing on fracture and crushing behaviour of fibre reinforced composite structures

Authors: Sandiri Devaraj; Y.B. Sudhir Sastry; P.R. Budarapu

Addresses: Department of Aeronautical Engineering, Institute of Aeronautical Engineering, Dundigal, Hyderabad, India ' Department of Aerospace Engineering, JAIN (Deemed to be University), Kanakapura Road, Bengaluru – 562112, Karnataka, India ' School of Mechanical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar, 752050, India

Abstract: An experimental investigation of hygrothermal ageing on the fracture toughness of glass fibre reinforced composite structures has been investigated. Double cantilever beam (DCB) and pipe specimens were immersed in an insulated tank filled with saline water, and thermally aged with the help of an electric heater and a micro-controller, at temperatures of 100°C, 80°C, 60°C and 40°C for six hours. In order to study the delamination, crack growth experiments were conducted on the composite DCB specimens to capture the load-displacement curves. The experiments were extended to estimate the compressive strength of the composite pipes of diameters 50 mm, 75 mm and 100 mm, respectively. As compared to the virgin specimen, the fracture toughness of laminated composite specimens with initial notch is observed to drop by 83.88%, as well as the compressive strength of pipe size 50 mm is observed to reduce by 21.5% when the temperature is raised to 100°C.

Keywords: fibre reinforced composite laminates; composite pipes; hygrothermal ageing; mode-I crack growth experiments; crushing strength.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHM.2025.145779

International Journal of Hydromechatronics, 2025 Vol.8 No.2, pp.200 - 216

Received: 04 Jan 2024
Accepted: 31 Aug 2024
Published online: 23 Apr 2025 *

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