Comprehensive analysis of in-plane tensile characteristics of thin carbon/aramid hybrid composites using experimental and RVE- based numerical study

The phenomenal growth in the developments of micro/mini Unmanned Aerial Vehicles needs thin composite materials for its structural applications for weight reduction. As these structures experience high energy loading during their life cycle, the performance improvement of overall failure strain and toughness is deemed compulsory. This study investigates the application of woven aramid fabric with thin woven CFRP in enhancing the strain to failure behaviour. In this study, the in-plane tensile properties of hybrid carbon/aramid polymer composite were investigated using experimental test followed by numerical validation. Composite laminates with different hybrid fraction and stacking sequences at the inter-ply level were tested under uniaxial tensile load. The results showed that the stacking sequences and location of high strain materials had evidently influenced the primary and secondary tensile modulus, toughness, failure strains and damage morphology. The numerical simulation was performed in ANSYS Composite Prep-Post module using homogenized materials properties based on the microscale RVE model. The Puck failure criteria with material performance degradation for progressive damage analysis is employed to capture the stress-strain relations. The hybrid samples exhibited significant improvement in the failure strain and energy absorption compared to CFRP. The numerical and experimental data showed a good correlation.