A Study on the Impact Fracture Toughness of Epoxy Matrix Composites

에폭시기지 복합재료의 충격파괴인성에 관한 연구

The fracture toughness of three different kinds of epoxy-matrix composites containing the same volume fraction of reinforcement and the variation of fracture toughness of glass-carbon fiber/epoxy hybrid composites due to the change of test temperature and different glass fiber content were investigated in this study. Glass fiber/epoxy composite provided much higher fracture toughness than that of other composites because of the high strain at failure of glass fiber. Particularly the carbon fiber/epoxy composite exhibited the low fracture toughness caused by the low strain energy absorbing capacity of carbon fiber. And it was found that the strain at failure of reinforcement and interfacial delamination absorbing a significant amount of impact energy played an important role to increase fracture toughness of composites. The fracture toughness of the glass-carbon fiber hybrid composites increased with increasing the glass fiber content and decreased with raising the test temperature. The residual stress arising from the different thermal expansion between the matrix and reinforcement influenced the fracture toughness of composites.