Low thermal cycling effects on mechanical properties of laminated composite materials

Degradation of mechanical properties by thermal cycling can be an important reason which accelerates failure of polymer matrix composites (PMCs). Different parameters affect the mechanical properties of the PMCs during the thermal cycling. So, a comprehensive experimental analysis to find main effective factors and contribution of the factors is essential. In this article, Taguchi method is used to design experiment and find contributions of four effective parameters on glass/epoxy composite components subjected to the thermal cycling. These parameters are temperature difference, composite layups, fiber volume fraction and number of thermal cycles that are selected among the different parameters. For thermal cycling tests, an apparatus is developed to subject samples on different temperature cycle profiles. The mechanical properties of specimens are obtained using the tensile test after the thermal cycling load. Statistical analysis of the experimental results showed the stacking sequence and the fiber volume fraction were the main factors to control the thermal cycling effects. Also, a regression analysis was developed for modeling the mechanical properties using the effective factors. Finally, sensitivity analysis of the effective factors was studied to describe the relationship between these parameters.