Influence of the curing cycles on the fatigue performance of unidirectional glass fiber reinforced epoxy composites

During the manufacturing process of fiber reinforced polymers the curing reaction of the resin results in shrinkage of the resin and introduces internal stresses in the composites. When curing at higher temperatures in order to shorten up the processing time, higher curing stresses and thermal stresses are built up and frozen, as residual stresses occur. In the present work, a glass fiber reinforced epoxy composite laminate with an unidirectional architecture based on non-crimp fabrics with backing fibers is investigated. Three different curing cycles (time-temperature cycles) are used, leading to different levels of internal stresses. The mechanical properties, static strength and fatigue life time, are measured in three different directions of the material, i.e. the fiber direction, 0°, the 30° off axis direction, and the 90° direction transverse to the fiber direction. It is experimentally demonstrated that the resulting residual stresses barely influences the quasi-static mechanical properties of reinforced glass-fiber composites. It is found that the fatigue performance in the 0° direction is significantly influenced by the internal stresses, whereas the fatigue performance in the off axes directions so is not significantly influenced of these stresses. This is related to the observations that the damage mechanisms in the off axes directions are mainly related to shear failure in the matrix and in the interface between fiber and matrix and different from the damage mechanisms in the fiber direction, where the damage initiates in the transverse backing fibers and is directly related to fiber fractures in the load-carrying axial fiber bundles.