Polymer composites: Effects of environmental aging and geometric discontinuity in the isotropic and anisotropic behaviors

Abstract

The paper aims to study the effects caused by circular hole and accelerated environmental aging on mechanical/residual properties, isotropic and anisotropic behavior of glass fiber reinforced plastics under the uniaxial tensile loads. In this study, different polymer composites are tested: one reinforced with E-glass fiber mats (ML) and the other reinforced by E-glass fibers in the form of bidirectional fabric (FL). The new empirical model proposed and called hole/aging influence on mechanical properties model to measure the aging/hole simultaneous influences on glass fiber reinforced plastic mechanical properties was proposed and analyzed to highlight the good agreement achieved in polymer composites behavior. The hole/aging influence on mechanical properties model results shows that the ML composite laminate proved to be more susceptible to mechanical property loss caused by simultaneous effects of hole and environmental aging, and that the proposed model has good agreement for all composite laminates analyzed and can be used with engineering tools in polymeric composites.