Notch Sensitivity of Glass/Polyester Laminates

Abstract

The effect of the hole size on the fracture behavior of glass/polyester fabric laminates is experimentally studied in the flexural test. An “ANSYS” program is employed for the purpose of comparison, and for computation of the maximum stress and its concentration factors. Four groups of composite materials are used, one layer; two layers; three layers, and four layers. All these groups are of 35% volume fraction, 450 g/m2 areal weight, and hole diameter of (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) mm for each group. ISO standard flexural specimens are tested and repeated three times.
It is noticed that values of stress concentration factors (Kt) decrease with the increase in hole diameter. Also, the fracture load and the stress concentration factors increase with an increased number of layers. The present Theoretical results show a good agreement with the experimental results.