DYNAMIC AND BALLISTIC PERFORMANCE OF GLASS/CARBON FIBER/ALUMINUM 1100 WIRE MESH REINFORCED COMPOSITE

Abstract

Increase in the demand for high-performance and lightweight structural materials in the automobile and aircraft industries may inspire a strong tendency to develop fiber metal laminates (FMLs). In this work, the FML composites are fabricated using different stacking sequences of glass/carbon fibers, aluminum wire mesh, BaSO4 filler and epoxy resin. Six different combinations of composites with different stacking sequences and wire mesh angles are fabricated using the hand-lay technique. Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), ballistic and wear experiments were used to investigate the fabricated composites’ performance. The FML6 Al wire mesh with BaSO4 filler increases the storage modulus by 16.12% and enhances the energy absorption capacity by 3.19%. From the ballistic, the carbon fiber composite (FML3) shows 4.47% improvement compared to the glass fiber composite (FML1) for the same 90∘ wire mesh orientation.