Characterization of the dynamic failure behaviour of a glass-fiber/vinyl-ester at different temperatures by means of instrumented Charpy impact testing

Instrumented Charpy impact testing is used to investigate the strength and failure properties of a glass-fiber/vinyl-ester composite. The test technique, originally developed for testing of steel specimens, is presented in its basic aspects; reported are the conventional procedures for determining load, displacement and energy absorption that a specimen experiences, over the entire phase of loading and subsequent failure of the specimen. Techniques are described for generating data of sufficient accuracy when applying the test to composites. In particular, the necessity of utilizing measurement chains of sufficiently high frequency response and striker tups of sufficiently high sensitivity is emphasized. Tests are performed with glass-fiber/vinyl-ester specimens, provided with notches oriented in two different directions with respect to the plies of woven glass fiber rovings. Two different types of failure result: fiber breakage ahead of the notch due to tensile stresses, and delaminations of the interface planes between the plies of woven glass fiber rovings due to shear stresses. Specifically, energies absorbed by the specimen over the entire failure process and values of maximum load occurring during the impact process are measured over a large range of temperatures. The data are correlated with the observed failure phenomena. The high level of information obtained in characterizing the failure behaviour by means of a test which requires limited technical effort proves the instrumented Charpy impact test to be a simple but effective tool for quantifying the quality of a composite in practical applications, as e.g. in surveillance programs for controlling processes such as manufacturing or aging of the material. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.