EFFECT OF AGING ON THE FRACTURE AND FAILURE BEHAVIOUR OF THERMOPLASTIC BASED COMPOSITES REINFORCED WITH SHORT GLASS FIBRES

M. SCHOSSIG; E. PÉREZ; R. LACH; C. BERNAL

Simposio; Simposio Argentino de Polímeros 2019; 2019

Fibre-reinforced polymer composites have been extensively investigated and applied in many different fields of industry. The processing of composites allows obtaining materials with improved mechanical properties such as strength, stiffness, toughness, and hardness. Particularly, polypropylene (PP) matrices reinforced with short glass fibres are very attractive for a large range of industrial applications, within which the automotive has the biggest market share. On the other hand, polybutene-1 (PB-1) based composites open up new application fields such as piping systems, medical technology and white goods industry. In addition, PB-1 composites have a great potential due to their lower tendency to creep, compared to PP-based materials. In addition, the industrial application of any polymer-based composite requires an exhaustive analysis of its mechanical performance and its relationship with many involved factors(components properties, morphology, interactions and processing). Into this field, a combination of standard mechanical tests with the in situ acoustic emission (AE) analysis allows the assessment of the material behaviour correlated with its internal structure (Bohse 2000; Bussiba et al. 2008).During service, composite components and structures are subjected to environmental conditions hence, the effect of aging on their mechanical performance is a topic of main interest for the safe use of these materials. In the present work, the effect of aging on the fracture and failure performance of injection-moulded short-fibre reinforced composites based on PP and PB-1 was investigated by means of uniaxial tensile tests on notched samples and simultaneous AE analysis.