Effects of parameters controlling the impact resistance behavior of the GFRP fabric impregnated with a shear thickening fluid

This study investigates the low-velocity impact behavior of the glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) fabric impregnated with a shear thickening fluid (STF). Low-velocity impact tests were conducted on eight GFRPs and eight GFRP-STF composite specimens. The results show that the STF could improve the maximum resistive force and energy absorption of the GFRP-STF composite for both penetration and non-penetration samples. The effectiveness of the STF in improving the impact behavior of the composite were differed significantly owing to various physical parameters such as the number of layers, constraint type, and laying angle. The maximum resistive force and energy dissipation of the four-layered GFRP-STF, considering the interaction of two-way fibers, increased by 105% and 113%, respectively. However, GFRP-STF composites under the + and O constraint types could only improve either the maximum resistive force or the energy dissipation. Under a laying angle of 45 degrees, the energy dissipation of GFRP-STF was also improved by 58.5% of the increase in maximum resistive force. It can be inferred from the impact tests conducted on all the GFRP-STF specimens that the specimens fail because of filament fracture or tearing in the zonal fracture, which is different from the results obtained for the GFRP specimens. (c) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).