The author would like to express his thanks and appreciation to Professor C. F. Mate for his guidance and support in the completion of this work. The advice and assistance of Professor J. R. Gaines are especially appreciated, for if he had not provided the hydrogen samples, this work would never have been done. The author is also grateful to Mr. William Baker and his staff for technical assistance; to Mr. Larry Wilkes for the line drawings; and to Mr. James Constable, whose measurement of the ortho-hydrogen content of the samples was invaluable.

Experimental and computational assessment of random, discontinuous, long fiber reinforced composites manufactured with the thermal spray-structural reaction injection molding (TS-SRIM) process is undertaken to determine their material and mechanical characteristics as design allowables. The glass content, the reinforcement architecture, and the geometry of the specimens are treated as the primary variables. The glass fiber reinforcement was either discontinuous long fiber (TS) or in combination with unidirectional continuous fiber (TS-UNI). In addition to classical flat coupons, hat beams are tested to assess structural response. The finite element models of the hat beams use the material data generated from the coupon tests. The coupon test data revealed that tensile, flexural, and compressive properties increased as a function of weight percent glass content for the coupons and beams with the isotropic reinforcement. For the orthotropic architectures with increasing glass content, perfonnance improved in the longitudinal direction and declined in the transverse direction. However, the loading capacity of the hat beams with a constant total glass content remained indifferent to the variation of UNI glass additions. The computational simulation results compared favorably to beam test results. Analytical studies of beams with stiffeners (ribs) subjected to bending loads showed that longitudinal ribs oriented along the beam axis offered little improvement in structural response, whereas transversely oriented ribs significantly increased the load capacity.