Effect of UD carbon on the specific mechanical properties of glass mat composites for marine applications

In this work the influence of a uniaxial carbon fabric layer on the mechanical performances of a glass mat/epoxy composite used for marine applications has been studied. All the structures have been made, at room temperature, by vacuum bagging technique. Tension and flexural tests have been carried out in order to evaluate the specific mechanical properties of the composite and to compare these with those of the marine aluminium alloy 6016-T4. The glass composites have higher specific strength but lower specific modulus than aluminium alloy. To increase the specific modulus of the composites, each layer of glass mat has been replaced with a layer of uniaxial carbon fabric. In addition, a simplified numerical model has been proposed to understand better the relevant dependence of the specific mechanical properties from the position and the orientation of the fibers. The comparison of the predicted numerical results with experiments has shown the accuracy of this model. © The Author(s), 2010.