Effect of fibre architecture on the tensile and impact behaviour of ductile stainless steel fibre polypropylene composites

The high stiffness (∼193 GPa) and high strain-to-failure (∼20%) of annealed stainless steel fibres present an opportunity to design ductile structural composites. In this research, the effect of the weave architecture on the tensile and impact behaviour of ductile stainless steel fibre/PP composites is investigated. Composites with three different weave architectures are compared: a quasi-unidirectional weave, a basket weave and a satin weave. The tensile test results show that all weave architectures show the same composite strain-to-failure, despite the difference in crimp. The composite with the basket weave (high crimp) has much lower stiffness and yield stress in comparison with the other two composites. This is attributed to significant out-of-plane deformations observed during the tensile test. The penetration impact results show that the high ductility of stainless steel fibre composites in tensile tests is transferred into excellent impact performance.