Strain rate effect on out of plane shear strength of fiber composites

This research aims to investigate strain rate effect on the out of plane shear strength of unidirectional fiber composites. Both glass/epoxy and graphite/epoxy composites were considered in this study. To demonstrate strain rate effect, composite brick specimens were fabricated and tested to failure in the transverse direction at strain ranges from 10(-4)/S to 700/s. Experimental observations reveal that the main failure mechanism of the specimens is the out of plane shear failure taking place on the plane oriented around 30 to 35 degree to the loading direction. The corresponding out-of-plane shear strength was obtained from the uniaxial failure stress through Mohr-Coulomb strength analysis. In addition, the associated shear strain rate on the failure plane was calculated through the coordinate transformation law. Results show that the out-plane shear strength increases with the increment of the shear train rates. A semi-logarithmic function expressed in terms of the normalized shear strain rate was employed to describe the rate dependence of the out-plane shear strength.