Low cycle flexural fatigue behavior of unidirectionally laminated FRP reinforced with carbon fibers and aramid fibers were studied. A fatigue experimental investigation has been carried out on carbon/epoxy (type C) and, aramid/epoxy (type A) and C/A hybrid (type C-A-C, A-CA) laminates. As the results, it was found that, 1) Type C-A-C exhibites a deterioration of flexural fatigue strength. This was caused by the AFRP layers degrading flexural stiffness of the beam. 2) Type A-C-A shows much improvement of flexural fatigue strength. The flexural strength of type A-C-A is twice of the flexural strength of type A and greater than the strength of type C over 10 cycles of fatigue. This improvement was caused by the CFRP inside layers which increase the flexural stiffness and supress the decrease of the stiffness of the AFRP layers in the tensile side of the beam.
Braided fabrics have been used in the industrial goods, where they provide an economical and efficient way of generating a wide range of fiber orientations on part of varying cross sections of complex shapes. Designing composite parts by using braided fabrics requires a knowledge of the basic material constant and the behavior of braided composite under various type of loading. This paper describes strain concentration effects and failure modes of flat braided composites with a hole under tensile deformation. The specimens are made from glass fibers and epoxy resin by hand lay up method. Two types of specimens are prepared to compare with the flat braided composites. They are the braided flat bar with a integrally-formed braided hole and with a machined hole. From the results of tensile tests, the braided hole is effective to reduce the strain concentration around the hole. Therefore the strength of flat bar with a braided hole is larger than that with a machined hole. Furthermore, it is found by using acoustic emission (AE) technics that the failure mode is different between braided hole and machined hole.