Letter

APPARENT INTERLAMINAR SHEAR STRENGTH MEASUREMENT BY FOUR POINT

SHORT BEAM TEST

Züleyha Aslan

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Cumhuriyet University, Sivas 58140, Turkey

E-mail: zuleyaslan@cumhuriyet.edu.tr

Received 4 December 2014; accepted 30 March 2015

ABSTRACT
The main purpose of this investigation is to characterize experimentally the interlaminar shear strength of cross-ply and
quasi-isotropic E-glass/epoxy composites by the four point short beam test. ASTM D2344-three point short beam strength
test results and the four point short beam strength test results are compared. To determine the details of the four point short
beam test, the effects of support span to thickness ratio, load span, ply number, width and fibre orientation on the interlaminar
shear strength are investigated. According to the test results the four point short beam test is more advantageous and more
convenient than the three point short beam test because of the better load distribution and higher support span to thickness
ratio. It is concluded that the support span to thickness ratio should be 8 to obtain pure interlaminar shear failure. The distance
between the two loading cylinders should be one half of the support span instead of one third of the support span. When
measuring the interlaminar shear strength for E-glass/epoxy laminates, the ply number and the width of the specimen should
be chosen carefully.

Keywords: Interlaminar shear strength. Four point short beam test. Delamination. E-glass/epoxy composites. Mechanical
testing.

1. INTRODUCTION test method. Two centrally located notches are machined

Laminated fibre reinforced composite materials are used a
lot in many structural engineering applications such as au-
tomotive, marine, transportation, electronics, aeronautical
and astronautical field and military in recent years. In spite
of the fact that these advanced materials have a number
of advantages, their interlaminar shear strength (ILSS) is
generally a critical design parameter because of the dela-
mination failure [1, 2]. If the ILSS and the longitudinal
tensile strength of unidirectional laminated composites are
compared, the ILSS is relatively low value [2]. For this
reason the ILSS is an important material property and to
determine this parameter correctly a number of tests have
been developed so far [3]. American Society for Testing
and Materials (ASTM) approved and standardized only
two of these ILSS test methods (ASTM D2344 Short-
Beam Strength Test Method and ASTM D3846 Double-
Notched Shear Test Method). Although these two standard
tests have been preferred usually, there are important prob-
lems about measuring the ILSS. For example, the length of
short beam strength test specimen is very short especially
for thin laminated composite due to the support span to
thickness ratio. When the force is applied to the mid-point
of short beam, compression damage under the loading
cylinder and around the support cylinders can occur. This
high stress concentration affects the real value of ILSS [2].
Therefore the ILSS obtained from the short beam method
is called “apparent” interlaminar shear strength accord-
ing to the some researchers. Consequently ASTM D2344
standard explained that short beam strength could be used
for quality control [4].
The other standardized method is ASTM D3846 in-plane
shear strength test method also known as double notched
Advanced Composites Letters, Vol. 24, Iss. 2, 2015
on opposing faces of composite specimen and when the
compression load is applied to the specimen by a compres-
sion tool, shear failure occurs between the two notches in
this method [5]. If two standard test methods results are
compared, owing to the high stress concentrations around
the notches, the ILSS value obtained by double notched
test is lower than that of the short beam strength test [6].
Many researchers have studied experimentally on the
test methods to obtain the real value of ILSS at last two
decades [3, 7-12]. In spite of the vast number of publica-
tions reported in the literature on the ILSS test methods,
only a few researches deal with the four point short beam
shear test [2, 13-18]. Four point bending test was found
to be an alternative method especially for thin composites
by Browning et.al. [13]. Although some researchers have
studied on four point bending test for determining the ILSS
in recent years, four point short beam test has not got any
standard yet. For this reason the present paper addresses
the investigation of four point short beam shear test.
The primary objective of this study is to determine the de-
tails of the four point short beam test and to compare ex-
perimentally the three and four point bending shear test re-
sults for E-glass/epoxy laminated composites. The effects
of support span to thickness ratio, load span, ply number,
width and fibre orientation on the ILSS were investigated
experimentally to determine the details of the four point
bending shear test.
2. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
2.1 Materials
The cross-ply and quasi-isotropic E-glass/epoxy laminated
27
 Züleyha Aslan
composite materials which were used for the experiments
were manufactured by hand lay-up technique at Izoreel
Composite Isolate Materials Company. The volume frac-
tion of the E-glass fibre is 65%. According to the manu-
facturer’s instructions Ciba Geigy, Bisphenol A, Epoxy
CY-225 epoxy resin and Ciba Geigy, Anhydride HY-225
hardener were mixed in the mass ratio of 100:80 for matrix
materials. E-glass fibre and matrix material were cured at
140 0C for 3 h with a pressure of 0.2 MPa using a hot lami-
nation press and then laminates were waited at 100 0C for 2
h and cooled to room temperature at the same pressure for
post curing process. In the present study, to investigate the
fibre orientation and ply number effects on the ILSS four
stacking sequences were considered as follows:
cross-ply: [00/900]3s - 12 ply
[00/900]4s - 16 ply
[00/900]8s - 32 ply
quasi-isotropic: [00/450/-450/900]2s - 16 ply
3 P max (1)
ILSS =
4bt
where ILSS is interlaminar shear strength (or three point
short beam strength) (MPa), Pmax is the maximum load
determined during the test (N), b is the width (mm) and
t is the thickness (mm). According to the ASTM D2344
[4] support span length (s) to specimen thickness (t) ratio
should be 4 to produce pure interlaminar shear failure.
Four point short beam shear test set-up and fixture used
in this investigation are shown in Fig.2. The specimen is
placed on two supporting cylinders and is loaded by two
loading cylinders each an equal distance from the midpoint
of the test specimen similar to ASTM D6272 flexural test
[20]. Most of the test details such as the specimen width,
the speed of test, the over-hang length, the diameter of the
loading and supporting cylinders are determined according
to the ASTM D2344 test database. To determine the load

For the experiments, a total of 168 coupons were cut by a

diamond saw. The elastic material properties of E-glass/
epoxy composite were determined according to the ASTM
standard tests. To measure the material properties, unidi-
rectional laminated composite was manufactured by hand
lay-up technique with the above procedure at the same
company. The experiments were carried out by Shimadzu
AG-X Tensile Testing Machine of 250 kN load capacity
at the Mechanics Laboratory of Cumhuriyet University. Fig.1: Three point short beam test set-up [4]
From Table 1 it can be seen the elastic material parameters
of the cross-ply and quasi-isotropic laminated composite
materials.
Table 1: Elastic material properties of E-glass/epoxy compos-
ites [19]

Property Symbol Value (Unit)

Fiber volume ratio Vf 65 (%)
Longitudinal modulus E1 41250 (MPa)
Transverse modulus E2 9240 (MPa)
a)
In-plane shear modulus G12 3380 (MPa)
Major Poisson’s ratio ν12 0.26 (-)
Density ρ 1.27 (gr/cm3)

2.2 Three and Four Point Short Beam Shear Test

The standard three point short beam test method is defined
by ASTM D2344 [4] for polymer matrix composite mate-
rials and their laminates. The short beam test specimen is
placed on two supporting cylinders as shown in Fig.1. The
load is applied on the midpoint of the test specimen by
the loading cylinder. The diameter of the loading cylinder
and support cylinder are 6 mm and 3 mm, respectively [4].
The three point short beam strength or apparent ILSS is b)
calculated from the classical Bernoulli-Euler beam theory Fig.2: Four point short beam a) test set-up and b) fixture
as follows:

28 Advanced Composites Letters, Vol. 24, Iss. 2, 2015

 Apparent Interlaminar Shear Strength Measurement by Four Point Short Beam Test
span of four point bending test, ASTM D6272 flexural test
database is used. There are two choices for the load span at
ASTM D6272, either one third (s/3) or one half of the sup-
Force (N)
port span (s/2) [20]. For this reason, the distance between
the loading cylinders is chosen as s/2 and s/3 to investigate
the load span effect on the ILSS in this study. ILSS is cal-
culated from the Eq.1 at four point short beam test.
All three and four point bend short beam tests were car-
ried out by Shimadzu AG-X Tensile Testing Machine of
250 kN load capacity at a rate of crosshead movement of
1 mm/min at room temperature. The specimen was load-
ed until either two-piece specimen failure with a fracture
sound occurred or the load dropped-off of 30 % according
to ASTM D2344 [4].
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1 The Effect of the Support Span to Thickness Ratio
on the ILSS
To determine the best value of s/t ratio for four point short
beam test and to compare three and four point short beam
tests, different support span to thickness ratios (s/t) were
used in this study. According to the ASTM D2344 s/t ratio
should be only 4 to produce pure interlaminar shear fail-
ure [4]. However s/t ratios were chosen as 4, 5, 6, 7 and
8 for the three point short beam test and 8, 9, and 10 for
the four point short beam test to investigate in detail of the
effects of the s/t ratio on ILSS. Aslan and Alnak [6] used
same ratios to characterize ILSS for woven E-glass/epoxy
composites.
When s/t ratios are chosen as 4, 5, 6 and 7 for the four
point short beam test, the compression failure occurs in
the specimen due to the standard loading cylinder. To ex-
emplify, if s/t ratio is 4 and thickness of the specimen is
5 mm, support span has to be 20 mm. Supposing that the
diameter of the standard loading cylinders is chosen 6 mm
according to the ASTM D2344, the compression failure is
observed instead of interlaminar shear failure at four point
short beam test with small support span. If the diameter
of loading cylinders is chosen smaller than 6 mm, exces-
sive indentation failure can occur [21]. For this reason, s/t
ratios were chosen higher than 7.
Interlaminar shear failure was obtained at all three and
four point short beam test. Typically experimental force-
displacement curves obtained from both tests are shown in
Fig.3. After reaching the maximum force value, the force
decreases suddenly. Fan et al. [1] explained that this type
of force-displacement curve indicated a clear interlaminar
shear failure in the sample. The optical photomicrograph
of typical delamination failure at the interface observed
from the four point short beam test specimen is shown in
Fig. 4.a. For four points bending test at s/t ratio of 8, 9
and 10 only interlaminar shear failure was obtained and
there was no bending failure or no compression damage
under the loading cylinders and around the support cylin-
Advanced Composites Letters, Vol. 24, Iss. 2, 2015
2500
2000
Three Point Short
1500 Beam Test
FPT (s/t=8)
1000
Four Point Short
TPT(s/t=4)
500
Beam Test
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
Displacement (mm)
Fig.3: Force-displacement curves for three and four point short
beam tests
a)
b)
Fig.4: Optical photomicrograph of a) Typical delamination
failure in four point short beam specimen
b) Bending failure on the tension side
ders. Cui et al. [2] found similar results for four point short
beam bending test of unidirectional glass/epoxy. When
the s/t ratios are 7 and 8 for the three point short beam test
and s/t ratio is higher than 10 for the four point short beam
test, bending failure occurred also. The optical photomi-
crograph of representing the bending failure on the tension
side is shown in Fig.4.b.
The specimens geometries and the values of ILSS of cross-
ply [00/900]4s oriented E-glass/epoxy composites obtained
from the three and four point short beam tests for different
s/t ratios are shown in Tables 2 and 3. On account of the
thickness difference between the edge and mid-point of the
composite panel after cure, the standard deviation of spec-
imen thickness is approximately 0.1. The load span was
chosen as s/2 for four point short beam test. The results are
the average of eight measurements. ILSS decreases with
increasing of the s/t ratio for both tests. It can be seen that
the all four point short beam test results are higher than the
all three point short beam test results. The difference be-
tween the ILSS value of three point short beam test at the
s/t ratio of 4 and the ILSS value of four point short beam
test at the s/t ratio of 8 is 5.32%. Cui et al. [2] found ex-
perimentally that the difference between the two tests was
approximately 6% for thick (4 mm) unidirectional glass/
epoxy composites. In their study, s/t ratio was chosen 5
29
 Züleyha Aslan
Table 2: Three point bend shear test results for the s/t ratio of 8, the ILSS value of four point short
Span length-to- beam test is higher than that of the three point short beam
specimen
thickness ratio
Specimen
No
Thickness
(mm)
Width
(mm)
Fracture Load
(N)
Apparent
ILSS (MPa)
Failure Mode test. The difference between the two tests is 32.87% be-
s/t
1 3.4 7.3 1991.63 60.18 cause of the better load distribution at four point bending
2 3.5 7.9 2272.65 61.64
3 3.4 7.4 1957.14 58.34 test. As a result, it is concluded that the four point short
4 3.5 7.0 2037.33 62.36
5 3.2 7.2 1895.91 61.71 beam test is more advantageous and more convenient to
4 6 3.3 7.2 2005.22 63.29 Shear
7 3.4 7.2 2067.84 63.35 measure the ILSS. Moreover, it is easier to do experiments
8 3.3 7.2 1909.22 60.26

Avg. 3.37 7.30 2017.11 61.39

due to the high s/t ratio. If s/t ratio is chosen 8 instead of
Sdev.
1
0.10
3.4
0.26
7.4
118.92
2089.70
1.71
62.29
4, the specimen length will be longer and cutting the cou-
2
3
3.4
3.3
6.4
7.4
1835.27
1977.21
63.25
60.72
pon by a diamond saw, placing the specimen on the sup-
4
5
3.5
3.3
7.8
7.4
2061.73
1988.97
56.64
61.08
port cylinders and carrying out the experiment with longer
5 6
7
3.5
3.6
7.7
7.3
2260.65
2185.98
62.91
62.38
Shear specimen is very easy.
8 3.4 7.4 1881.56 56.08

Avg.
Sdev.
3.42
0.10
7.35
0.42
2035.13
144.57
60.66
2.79
3.2. The Effect of the Load Span on the ILSS
1
2
3.2
3.3
7.3
6.7
1776.06
1778.80
57.02
60.33 One main purpose of this study is to determine the correct
3
4
3.6
3.5
6.9
6.6
1817.66
1700.96
54.88
55.22 load span for the four point short beam test. So far, the
6
5
6
3.4
3.3
7.2
7.5
1914.26
1969.85
58.64
59.69 Shear four point short beam method hasn’t got any standard. To
7
8
3.3
3.2
7.4
7.0
1866.58
1750.95
57.32
58.62 determine the load span effect on the ILSS, the distance
Avg. 3.35 7.07 1821.89 57.71 between the two loading cylinders was chosen one third
Sdev. 0.14 0.32 89.48 1.97
1 3.4 8.1 1854.90 50.51 (s/3) and one half (s/2) of the support span according to
2 3.4 7.2 1745.98 53.49
3 3.4 7.8 1742.16 49.26 ASTM D6272 [20] flexural test database. The values of
4 3.3 7.1 1551.79 49.67
5 3.4 7.8 1897.30 53.65 the ILSS obtained from the four point short beam test at
7 6 3.5 8.4 1953.56 49.83 Shear + Bending
7 3.6 8.4 2045.04 50.72 different s/t ratios for two load spans are shown in Fig.5. It
8 3.4 8.2 1852.55 49.83

Avg. 3.42 7.87 1830.41 50.87

is important to notice that the values of ILSS obtained the
Sdev.
1
0.08
3.0
0.50
8.2
150.87
1325.65
1.72
40.41
test at load span of s/2 are always higher than those for the
2
3
3.6
3.5
8.0
7.8
1794.42
1596.73
46.72
43.86
test at load span of s/3. The difference between the ILSS
4
5
3.4
3.4
8.6
8.3
1695.59
1687.17
43.49
44.83
results is approximately 10%.
8 6 3.0 8.3 1377.42 41.48 Shear + Bending
7 3.3 8.5 1561.60 41.75
8 3.4 8.5 1761.99 45.72
64.84
65
Avg. 3.32 8.27 1600.07 43.53 62.7
Sdev. 0.21 0.27 171.99 2.19 61.78
ILSS (MPa)

60 58.56 s/2
Table 3: Four point bend shear test results (Load Span=s/2) s/3

55.44
Span length-to- 55 53.92
specimen Specimen Thickness Width Fracture Load Apparent
Failure Mode
thickness ratio No (mm) (mm) (N) ILSS (MPa)
s/t
50
1 3.4 7.8 2270.30 64.20
8 9 10
2 3.2 7.2 2106.79 68.58 s/t
3 3.2 7.6 2121.81 65.43
4 3.3 7.6 2003.47 59.91
5 3.3 7.2 1968.90 62.14 Fig.5: The effect of the load span on the ILSS
8 6 3.0 7.6 1895.23 62.34 Shear
7 3.2 7.4 2186.78 69.26
8 3.1 7.2 1991.83 66.92

Avg. 3.21 7.45 2068.13 64.84

Sdev. 0.12 0.23 124.82 3.30
1 3.5 7.4 2083.97 60.34
2 3.4 7.5 2123.36 62.45
3 3.4 6.4 1931.55 66.57
4 3.4 7.5 2151.09 63.26
5 3.6 6.4 1942.48 63.23
9 6 3.4 8.8 2443.39 61.24 Shear
7 3.5 7.5 2175.25 62.15
8 3.4 6.4 1809.68 62.37

Avg. 3.45 7.23 2082.59 62.70

Sdev. 0.07 0.82 193.48 1.84
1 3.3 7.2 1903.30 60.07
2 3.2 8.1 2153.83 62.32
3 3.3 8.0 2137.74 60.73
4 3.4 8.0 2223.85 61.31
5 3.5 8.0 2349.18 62.92
10 6 3.1 8.0 2058.03 62.23 Shear
7
8
3.4
3.4
8.5
8.0
2342.54
2318.30
60.79
63.92
Fig.6: The loading, shear and bending moment diagrams of
Avg. 3.32 7.97 2185.84 61.78
short beams (three point, four point-load span s/2 and four
Sdev. 0.12 0.35 155.71 1.28
point-load span s/3)

and the diameter of loading cylinder was 10 mm for three
point short beam test whereas s/t ratio was chosen 10 and
the diameter of loading cylinders were 20 mm for four
point short beam test.
If we compare the three and four point short beam results
30
The difference among the all short beam tests (three point,
four point-load span s/2 and four point-load span s/3) can
also explained by the shear and bending moment diagrams.
According to the Fig.6 the force applied by the testing ma-
chine to the three beams is same. Although the maximum
shear force value is same in all beams, the maximum bend-
Advanced Composites Letters, Vol. 24, Iss. 2, 2015
 Apparent Interlaminar Shear Strength Measurement by Four Point Short Beam Test
ing moment (Ps/4) occurs at three points loading. Because Three Point Short Beam Test
of the better load distribution at four points loading, bend-
ing moments of both four point loadings are smaller than 65
61.39
that of three points loading. If the load span is chosen half 59.93

ILSS (MPa)
60 58.57
of the support span, minimum bending moment (Ps/8) is
obtained. The difference between the bending moments of 55

two load spans is %25. Total failure in the beam increas- 50

es due to high bending moment and concentrated force. 7.3 10.42 12.3

In summary, the distance between the loading cylinders Width (mm)

should be chosen half of the support span. It is clear that a)

this is the best choice.

Four Point Short Beam Test
3.3. The Effect of the Ply Number on the ILSS
To investigate the ply number effect on the ILSS, three dif-
64.84
ferent cross-ply E-glass/epoxy composite plates were used 65
62.05 61.63
with 12, 16 and 32 plies. The values of ILSS obtained three

ILSS (MPa)
60
and four point short beam tests are shown in Fig.7. s/t ratio
was chosen 4 for the three point short beam test and 8 for 55

the four point short beam test. The load span was chosen 50
7.45 10.21 12.05
half of the support span. According to the test results, the b)
Width (mm)
ply number affects significantly the value of ILSS. The
highest ILSS was obtained from the laminate with 16 ply Fig.8:
b) The effect of the width on the ILSS a) Three point short
beam test b) Four point short beam test
for both tests. For four point short beam test, the difference
between the results of laminates with 12 ply and 16 ply
is 3.35% and the difference between the results of lami- 64.84

nates with 16 ply and 32 ply is 6.65%. The ILSS result of 65

61.39
laminate with 12 ply is higher than that of the laminate
ILSS (MPa)

60 Three Point Bend s/t=4

with 32 ply for four point short beam test. However, the 57.93 Four Point Bend s/t=8

ILSS result of laminate with 12 ply is lower than that of the 55

54.58

laminate with 32 ply for three point short beam test. When
measuring the ILSS for E-glass/epoxy laminates, the ply
50
cross-ply quasi-isotropic
Fiber Orientation
number of specimen should be chosen very carefully.
Fig.9: The effect of the fibre orientation on the ILSS
the cross-ply [00/900]4s and the quasi-isotropic [00/450/-
64.84
65
62.67 450/900]2s laminated composites were used for both tests.
The average values recorded for the cross-ply and the
61.39
60.53
59.42
ILSS (MPa)

60
Three Point Bend s/t=4
Four Point Bend s/t=8
55.9
55
50
12 16 32
Ply Number
Fig.7: The effect of the ply number on the ILSS
3.4. The Effect of the Width on the ILSS
ASTM D2344 [4] recommends that the width of the speci-
men should be twice as the thickness of the specimen for
the three point short beam test. However, it is not clear
what the correct width should be for the four point short
beam test. For this reason, the width effect on the ILSS
was studied also in this study. Three specimen widths (ap-
proximately 2t, 3t, 4t) were used. The values of widths in
Fig.8 are the average of eight specimen widths. Results ob-
tained the three and four point short beam tests are shown
in Fig.8. The ILSS increases with decreasing the specimen
width. The width of the four point short beam specimen
should be twice as the thickness similar to ASTM D2344.
3.5. The Effect of the Fibre Orientation on the ILSS
To determine the fibre orientation effect on the ILSS,
Advanced Composites Letters, Vol. 24, Iss. 2, 2015
quasi-isotropic laminates are respectively 61.39 MPa and
54.58 MPa for three point short beam test, and 64.84 MPa
and 57.93 MPa for four point short beam test (Fig.9). The
ILSS results of cross-ply laminates are higher than that of
the quasi-isotropic laminates. Feraboli and Kedward [17]
compared the four point short beam test results of uni-
directional [00]s, cross-ply [00/900]s and quasi-isotropic
[00/450/-450/900]s lay ups of carbon fibre reinforced epoxy
impregnated tape. Their ILSS results for the unidirection-
al, cross-ply and quasi-isotropic laminates are respective-
ly, 76.6 MPa, 76.5 MPa and 76.9 MPa. According to their
results fibre orientation does not affect the ILSS for carbon
epoxy laminate. However, the fibre orientation of E-glass/
epoxy composite is important when measuring the ILSS.
4. CONCLUSIONS
To determine the details of the four point short beam test a
number of tests have been carried out. Three and four point
short beam tests are compared for the E-glass/epoxy lami-
nated composites. From the results, the ILSS value of four
point short beam test is higher than that of the three point
short beam test. The difference between the ILSS value of
31
 Züleyha Aslan
three point short beam test at the s/t ratio of 4 and the ILSS
value of four point short beam test at the s/t ratio of 8 is
approximately 5%.
The s/t ratio should be 8 to obtain the real value of ILSS
and the load span should be one half of the support span
from the four point short beam test results. The ply number
and fibre orientation change significantly the results. The
best results are obtained from the cross-ply composite
laminates with 16 ply. It can be said that the four point
short beam method is the best choice for measuring the
ILSS. Moreover, it is easier to do experiments due to the
high s/t ratio and longer specimen at four point short beam
test.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is supported by the Scientific Research Project
Fund of Cumhuriyet University under the project number
M-316.
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