Fibre-reinforced polymeric composite materials are becoming substantial and convenient materials in the repair and replacement of traditional metallic materials due to their high stiffness. The composites undergo different types of fatigue loads during their service life. The drive to enhance the design methodologies and predictive models of fibre-reinforced polymeric composite materials subjected to fatigue stresses is reliant on more precise and reliable techniques for assessing their fatigue life. The influences of fibre volume fraction and stress level on the fatigue performance of glass fibre-reinforced polyester (GFRP) composite materials have been studied in the tension–tension fatigue scenario. The fibre volume fractions for this investigation were set to: 20%, 35%, and 50%. The tensile testing of specimens was performed using a universal testing machine and the Young’s modulus was validated with four different prediction models. In order to identify the modes of failure as well as the fatigue life of composites, polyester-based GFRP specimens were evaluated at five stress levels which were 75%, 65%, 50%, 40%, and 25% of the maximum tensile stress until either a fracture occurred or five million fatigue cycles was reached. The experimental results showed that glass fibre-reinforced polyester samples had a pure tension failure at high applied stress levels, while at low stress levels the failure mode was governed by stress levels. Finally, the experimental results of GFRP composite samples with different volume fractions were utilized for model validation and comparison, which showed that the proposed framework yields acceptable correlations of predicted fatigue lives in tension–tension fatigue regimes with experimental ones.
Polymer composite researchers have extensively explored the influences of fiber orientation, volume fraction, type, length, as well as the impacts of matrix type, matrix/reinforcement interface, fibers hybridization, and nanoparticle incorporation on the mechanical behaviors of fiber-reinforced composite materials. The impacts of tailored fiber architectures on the mechanical characteristics of bulk polymeric-based composites, on the other hand, have not been investigated. The purpose of this research is to determine the effect of fiber arrangement on the mechanical characteristics of glass fiber-reinforced polymeric materials (GFRP). Unreinforced (UR) polyester, surface reinforced arranged (SRA) composites and bulk reinforced arranged (BRA) composites were fabricated. Characterizations have been performed using scanning electron microscope rotating bending fatigue machine and a universal testing machine. Results demonstrate that SRA’s lifespan after being exposed to bending fatigue has increased significantly with respect to UR and BRA samples. Average fatigue life for SRA samples is 61 times longer than the life of BRA samples at 56 MPa bending stress. Furthermore, a Weibull distribution function with shape parameter and scale parameter was implemented to analyze the fatigue life dataset statistically. The introduction of SRA novel design has promising results for cost reduction as well as quality improvement.
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