Statical Study of Charpy Absorbed Energy of GFRP

Abstract

An experimental investigation of Charpy impact energy was conducted utilizing hand-lay-up made GFRP materials which were fabricated using three types of glass fiber sheets. Then, Weibull distribution analyses were applied to clarify the effects of types and volume ratio of glass fibers, crack orientations on impact energy of GFRP materials. It was shown that within volume ratio below 20%, data scatter was relatively small and 2 parameters Weibull distribution was applicable, however, volume ratio above 30%, data scatter became large and 3 parameters Weibull distribution was useful to get best fitted curves of Charpy impact data. Fracture appearences were also observed to recognize the fracture process of each type of GFRP specimens. It was noted that using woven roving sheets, damaged zones grew relatively large, which caused the high values of impact energy. While using chopped strandmats, a damaged zone was limited near a crack surface and impact energy decreased to about a half of woven roving made GFRP specimens.