Thermal cycling of (heated) fibre metal laminates

Glass-fibre epoxy composite, GLARE, and heated GLARE samples have been thermal cycled for 4000, 8000 and 12,000 cycles with temperature differences of 120 °C. The interlaminar shear strength (ILSS) increased by 6.9% after 8000 cycles for the glass-fibre epoxy composite material compared to the non-cycled samples. The GLARE samples showed a maximum ILSS increase of 4.2% after 12,000 cycles. However, the heated GLARE samples showed a continuous decrease of the ILSS with a maximum decrease of 7.8% after 12,000 cycles.