Flexural Fatigue of Unbalanced Glass Carbon Hybrid Composites

Abstract

Unbalanced composite layups with bendtwist coupling show potential for aeroelastic tailoring in wind turbine blades. Before these materials can be implemented, their responses to long term cyclic loading must be considered. This paper studies the fatigue characteristics of an unbalanced glasscarbon hybrid laminate with a [45glass/−45glass/24carbon/24carbon]s layup. Flexural fatigue was performed at 7 different load magnitudes up to 1 أ— 106 cycles to characterize the failure modes and fatigue life of the composite. Stiffness degradation occurred on the tension side due to matrix cracking and small regions of delamination on the glass plies, whereas the failure mechanism of the laminate was by delamination between the glass and carbon. SN curves were generated from experimental results and static finite element analyses (FEA) based on interlaminar shear stresses and were compared with laminates from previous literature. It was determined that the interlaminar stresses were influenced more so by the lower stiffness of the unbalanced layup than by the induced torsional deflections: leading to the conclusion that bendtwist coupling had little influence on flexural fatigue of glasscarbon hybrid composites.