Materials Science and Engineering A 412 (2005) 137140

A study of the mechanical properties of steel/aluminium/GRP laminates

S.M.R. Khalili a, , R.K. Mittal b , S. Gharibi Kalibar a
a

Mechanical Engineering Department, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran b Applied Mechanics Department, I.I.T., New Delhi, India Received in revised form 18 August 2005

Abstract One of the new and advanced composite materials, known as bermetal laminates (FMLs) consisting of bonded thin metal sheets and ber/adhesive layers, is rapidly becoming a good substitute for metal structures, especially in aerospace and aircraft applications. This is because of its good mechanical properties such as excellent fatigue and impact resistance as well as damage tolerance, without sacricing low weight. In this article, standard FML samples prepared from various lay ups of glass ber/epoxy laminates with steel and/or aluminum sheets were tested and their mechanical characteristics compared with each other and with monolithic metals or ber composite laminates in order to study the feasibility of their replacement in aerospace industry. 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Steel/aluminium sheets; Glass ber/epoxy laminates; Fibermetal laminates

1. Introduction During last few decades, many scientists have been aiming their efforts to develop new materials, which would retain the low weight and good mechanical properties of aluminum alloys. Fiber reinforced metal laminates (FMLs) are a new type of laminated composites, consisting of thin metal layers (0.20.5 mm) and thin polymeric composite layers reinforced with glass, carbon or Kevlar bers (0.20.3 mm) as shown in Fig. 1. They combine both the good characteristics of metals such as ductility, impact and damage tolerances with the benets of ber composite materials such as high specic strength, high specic stiffness and good corrosion and fatigue resistance. The bond lines act as barriers against corrosion and the laminate has an inherent high burn-through resistance as well as good damping and insulation properties. They can be a good choice for main aircraft structures, for example in lower and upper wings as well as in the fuselage and tail sections. Till now different FML structures have been tested and some have been applied in different aerospace applications. The important FML lay-ups are categorized in four groups: (1) GLARE, (2) ARALL, (3) CARE, (4) steel-C/epoxy, (5) HTCL [14]. In this paper, a new FML lami-

nate consisting of aluminum, steel and glass ber/epoxy layers has been introduced. Its fabrication and testing for mechanical properties were reported earlier [5]. 2. Specimen preparation The three essential FML components are: ber, resin and metal. In the present study, the epoxy resin with the following properties was used (specimen code No. 1): = 1.11.2 (g/cm3 ), viscosity = 10001400 (MPa s), curing time = 1530 (h) (below 25 C). Glass-reinforced epoxy, fabricated by hand lay-up method is a combination of glass bers of the type T (90 /M 225 E10) with the above-mentioned epoxy resin. The glass ber is unidirectional with an average glass ber content of about 20% in all the GRP layers. The properties of GRP layers were obtained from the tests (specimen code No. 2). Metals are mainly aluminium AA.1050 with the following properties (specimen code No. 3): tensile strength = 75156 MPa, yield strength = 28148 MPa, shear strength = 6283 MPa, Youngs modulus = 69 GPa, specic weight = 2.7 g/cm3 , and stainless steel 316 L with the following properties (specimen code No. 4): tensile strength = 450 (MPa), yield strength = 70 MPa, Youngs modulus = 200 GPa, specic weight = 7.9 g/cm3 . Four types of FML lay-ups were fabricated by the hand lay-up method. The metals were surface treated (metalized

Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 21 77343300; fax: +98 21 77334338. E-mail address: smrkhalili@mail.com (S.M.R. Khalili).

0921-5093/$ see front matter 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.msea.2005.08.016

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S.M.R. Khalili et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 412 (2005) 137140

Fig. 1. A sample of FML lay up.

and anodized) for adequate bonding between the layers. The types and their corresponding specimen codes are as follows:
(a) St/GRP/Al/GRP/St (c) Al/GRP/Al/GRP/Al code No. 5 code No. 7 (b) Al/GRP/St/GRP/Al (d) St/GRP/St/GRP/St code No. 6 code No. 8.

Fig. 2. Comparison of tensile stressstrain curves for various FMLs.

3. Mechanical tests According to the ASTM standards [6], three mechanical tests; namely tensile test, three-point bend test and Charpy impact test were conducted on the standard samples mentioned above and the results were compared to study the mechanical behavior of FMLs. The code numbers for each sample consist of double digits. The rst digit indicates the test code number and the second indicates the sample code number. 3.1. Tensile test According to the ASTM D 3039-76, at tensile specimens were fabricated and the end tabs xed to the specimens. Tensile tests were conducted using Instron 8502 machine, keeping the crosshead speed as 5 mm/min and the temperature at 25 C. The tensile test results are given in Table 1 and Fig. 2. Fig. 3 shows samples 2, 7 and 8 after fracture. The integrity of samples 7 and 8, which have metal layers, is much better, even after fracture, as compared to sample 2, which is plain GRP.
Table 1 Tensile test results Property/sample Youngs modulus (GPa) Ultimate tensile strength (MPa) Displacement at break (mm) Energy absorption (J) Density (g/cm3 ) Specic strength (MPa/(g/cm3 )) Specic stiffness (GPa/(g/cm3 )) Energy absorption/GRP energy absorption Specic tensile strength increase in comparison to aluminium (%) Specic tensile strength increase in comparison to steel (%) Specic stiffness increase in comparison to GRP (%) Specic toughness Code no. 12 20.79 416.9 3.329 17.13 1.46 285.5 14.24 1 432 402 11.73 Code no. 15 90.9 345.5 38.68 171.4 3.748 92.18 24.25 9.9 72 62 70 45.73 Code no. 16 53.33 243.2 35.86 90.80 2.435 99.88 21.90 5.3 86 76 54 37.28 Code no. 17 40.25 214.5 5.32 11 1.97 108.88 20.43 0.64 103 91 43 5.6 Code no. 18 102.5 340 43.74 294.2 4.10 82 25 17 46 38 75.5 71.75 Code no. 13 69 145 2.7 53.7 25.56 79 Code no. 14 200 450 7.9 56.96 25.31 6 78

Fig. 3. Samples 2, 7 and 8 after tensile fracture.

From Table 1, it can be concluded that the specic strengths of FML composites are higher than that of the monolithic aluminium (by 46103%) and steel (by 3891%) layers. The strength of GRP is comparable with that of the FML composites, but due to the density, the specic strength of GRP is much higher than that of the FML composites. Comparison of the values of stiffness and specic stiffness show the improvement in the FML composites with respect to the GRP. In elastic region, the increase in metal content increases the tensile modulus and hence the stiffness. This feature is summarized as: E18 > E15 > E16 > E17 > E12

S.M.R. Khalili et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 412 (2005) 137140 Table 2 Three-point bending test results Property/sample Bending yield stress, y (MPa) Maximum bending strength, b (MPa) Maximum strain at breaking point max (%) Bending stiffness, E (MPa) Specic bending strength (MPa/(g/cm3 )) Specic bending stiffness (GPa/(g/cm3 )) Code no. 21 19.3 71.2 1.6 3558.3 59.8 2.99 Code no. 22 81.1 413.4 2.3 10306.1408 283 7 Code no. 25 405.3 905 5.9 142858.8 240 38 Code no. 26 205 450 3.8 45800.5 185 18.8 Code no. 27 118.8 336.8 2.5 27990.2 171 14.21

139

Code no. 28 447.4 1020 5.8 168750.8 248.8 41.1

As in the hand lay up technique, the ber content in polymeric layers cannot be exactly kept constant in all samples, and hence the tensile characteristics could not be compared in a fair manner. But the error was calculated using the rule of mixtures and it was found to be less than 10%. As can be seen from Table 1, although the GRP composites have good specic tensile strength and specic stiffness, yet they are not widely used in primary structures of airplanes or aerospace vehicles. This is due to the low energy absorption property of GRP during bending and impact loading, as observed experimentally. In Table 1, the areas under the stressstrain curves indicating the energy absorption during deformation are also shown. This area increases with the increase in steel content, for example the sample 8 has an area 17 times higher than for the sample 2. It can be concluded from Table 1 that FML samples which use aluminium in their lay-up fail at about 3 mm elongation of these layers. After this, the steel layers take up the applied load. This suggests that the aluminium layers used are not suitable for FML composites in structural application. As can be seen from Table 1, the specic toughness of sample 8 is nearly seven times greater than that of the GRP laminates. As poor energy absorption is the main weakness of GRP panels in primary structural applications, sample code No. 8 is the best choice due to its good tensile properties, i.e. high specic strength and stiffness. 3.2. Bending test The three-point bending tests, using specications of ASTM D 790M-93, were carried out on Zwick 1484 and results tabulated in Table 2. In Fig. 4, the load-displacement curves of all samples tested are compared with each other and in Fig. 5 the deformed shapes of FML samples are shown. It can be observed that in the elastic region, the FML composites show better yield stress and stiffness in bending as the number of steel layers increase. The following trend is noted: E28 > E25 > E26 > E27 > E22 > E21 Since the aluminium alloy used in this work is weak, placement of these layers at the locations far away from the neutral axis of the samples would not help in increasing the bending strength and stiffness of FML composites. The bending strength of the samples decreasing according to the following sequence: 28, 25, 26, 22, 27, 21. Since aluminium and steel are more exible than resin and GRP, new lightweight exible structures are obtained for advanced aerospace applications by stacking metal and com-

posite layers. Samples 5 and 8 did not show any breakage or cracking in the layers, thus delaminating was the only cause of their failure, while samples 6 and 7 failed quickly due to tensile failure of external layers. The maximum deection of sample 8 is lower than that of 5, while the bending strength comparison is of opposite kind. This is because of the aluminum layer at the mid section of sample 5, which takes up the low tensile load depending on its distance from neutral axis. This material is more deformable than steel. It is seen that max 25 > max 28 > max 26 > max 27 > max 22 > max 21 . It can be concluded that FML samples show more exible behavior than the composite structures. Taking weight into consideration, the specic strength and stiffness also show almost the same trend as above, implying that the sample 8 shows best results among the FML composites. Only the specic strength

Fig. 4. Bending behavior comparison diagrams.

Fig. 5. Bending deformation of FML samples.

140 Table 3 Charpy impact test results Property/sample Energy per unit area, S (kJ/m2 )

S.M.R. Khalili et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 412 (2005) 137140

Code no. 31 24

Code no. 32 195

Code no. 35 290

Code no. 36 240

Code no. 37 185

Code no. 38 340

Fig. 6. Impact fracture appearance of FML samples.

of sample 8 is lower than that of sample 2, because of the brittleness of GRP. The specic stiffness of sample 8 is nearly seven times higher than that of sample 2. 3.3. Charpy impact test The test was conducted using Ivory impact test machine and the samples were prepared according to the ASTM D 25678 standards. The results are given in Table 3. Sample 8 has the highest impact energy and the highest resistance to impact load. The trend of impact energy absorbed by the samples is as follows: S38 > S35 > S36 > S32 > S37 > S31 . Sample 7 has lower impact strength than sample 2, because of the deciency of aluminum layers in tolerating tensile loads. As was observed, the FML samples show more exibility when compared to GRP. The impact fracture appearance of samples 7 and 8 are shown in Fig. 6. 4. Conclusions For the rst time, a new combination of metal and ber composites has been reported for FML composites, namely the steel/aluminium/GRP laminate. By comparing the results obtained in evaluating the mechanical properties in Tables 13, the following conclusions can be drawn: - The main characteristic of the FML composites is their damage tolerance limit, which can be obtained by the comparison

of the area under the stressstrain curves. This characteristic of FML composites is superior when compared to that of GRP. - The presence of steel layers in FML sample helps in increasing the energy absorption, stiffness and displacement with respect to other FML samples. - The stiffness of the composite with steel layers (sample 8) in bending shows an increase of 16 times and the displacement under the point of loading shows an increase of nearly 4 times as compared to the corresponding of GRP sample. However, this has been possible at the expense of increased weight of steel composite (2.7 times) vis-` -vis GRP sample. The impact a damage tolerance of FML composites is much superior to that of plain GRP. This facilitates the use of FML composites for primary structures in aerospace industry. References
[1] J.F. Laliberto, C. Poon, P.V. Straznicky, J. Polym. Compos. 21 (4) (2000). [2] A. Vlot, L.B. Vogelesang, T.J. Vries, International Glare Conference, Delft University, Netherlands, September 2001. [3] L.B. Vogelesang, A. Vlot, J. Mater. Process. Technol. 103 (1) (2000). [4] T.J. Vries, A. Vlot, F. Hashagen, Compos. Struct. 46 (2) (1999). [5] K.S. Gharibi, Experimental Study on Mechanical Properties of Fiber Metal Laminates with Respect to Their Application in Aerospace Technology, M.S. thesis, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, February 2003. [6] L.A. Carlsson, R.B. Pipes, Experimental Characterization of Advanced Composite Materials, Technomic Publishers, Lancaster, 1997.