FABRICATION, TESTING AND COMPARISON OF MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF COMPOSITE LAMINATES AND CHOPPED STRAND MAT

Experimental investigation was carried out to compare mechanical properties of composite laminates made from multidirectional plies and those of Chopped Strand Mat (CSM). All the samples were fabricated according to available ASTM standards. Laminates with six different configurations were made using fiber glass roving and two types of matrix materials which were polyester and epoxy resins. The fabrication process involved filament winding roving and wet layup. Filament winding roving was used for making unidirectional pre-impregnated plies which were then stacked using wet layup to obtain laminates with different stacking sequences. Unidirectional, cross ply and angle ply laminates were obtained with orientations of [0 degrees, 0 degrees, 0 degrees], [0 degrees, 90 degrees, 0 degrees] and [0 degrees, +45 degrees, 90 degrees, -45 degrees, 0 degrees] as the stacking sequence, respectively. CSM was fabricated from glass fibers and polyester matrix using a locally developed mold setup. The fabricated multidirectional laminates and CSM specimens were subjected to flexural loading to determine their mechanical properties. The results obtained from these tests show that mechanical properties are dependent on the stacking sequence. The angle ply epoxy laminate gave the highest values for the flexural loads and the Modulus of Elasticity. CSM showed quite inferior mechanical properties as compared to those of the laminates made from multidirectional plies.