Compressive properties of high-resilience thermal-bonding cushioning inter/intra-ply hybrid composites

Abstract

In this study, hybrid composites composed of high-resilience fiber and reinforced with glass fabric were successfully prepared by needle punching and thermal bonding process. The effects of areal density, needle punching depth, and fiber blending ratio of the composites on delamination, cushioning, hardness, support factor, and hysteresis loss were investigated, and the relevant mechanisms were elucidated. Experimental results indicated that the hybrid composites exhibit high cushioning properties under multidrop-weight impact. The factors studied considerably influenced the cushioning properties of the composites. Hardness and support factor improved with increasing areal density and needle punching depth but decreased with increasing crimp hollow fiber ratio because of compression stress relaxation. Hybrid composites with various areal densities exhibited contrasting effects on the hysteresis behaviors of compression and indentation force deflections; these effects are attributed to the dissipation of support and energy in the materials surrounding the indentation. Instantaneous compression and recovery processes yielded no significant effects on fiber slippage; however, hysteresis loss was slightly affected by compression stress relaxation. The high-resilience thermal-bonding hybrid composites proposed in this work exhibited high cushioning and compression resistance properties.