Flexural Behavior of Hybrid Layered Composites Suitable for Automotive Structural Applications

Electric vehicle is the current trend in automotive industry. A light weight material at affordable cost is preferred for these types of vehicles. Composite is a suitable material for this due to their attractive strength-to-weight ratio. Even though carbon fiber reinforced composites provide very good strength and modulus its usage is limited because of their higher price. Hybrid laminates stacked with glass/carbon/kevlar fiber layer shall provide good strength at lower cost. This work focus on the flexural behaviour of glass fiber reinforced laminates stacked with carbon and kevlar fiber as outer layer. Laminates were prepared by hand lay-up method. Three-point bending test was conducted as per ASTM standard. A significant improvement in flexural modulus and bending resistance was observed for the glass/carbon-epoxy hybrid laminates when compared with the glass-epoxy laminate. The failure mechanism was also studied using optical micrographs.