Manufacturing and investigating the load, energy and failure attributes of thin ply carbon/Elium® thermoplastic hollow composites under low-velocity impact

[Display omitted] •Manufacturing optimization study for carbon/Elium® composite rectangular tubes was carried out using B-RTM process and moldability zones are defined.•Impact tests at 5 energy levels were performed with in-situ high-speed camera investigation to understand load and energy attributes.•Carbon/Elium® composite has shown 170% higher absorbed energy and 70% higher major damage energy compared to Carbon/epoxy composite.•Carbon/Elium® composite has shown matrix cracks, strong fibre–matrix interface and plastic deformation sites during the SEM investigation. Current research investigates the low-velocity impact response of the hollow rectangular tubular structures manufactured using Bladder Resin Transfer Moulding (B-RTM) process with novel thermoplastic Elium® (EL) resin as a matrix system and thin ply carbon fibre as the reinforcement. Manufacturing process parameters are optimised and injection schemes and the moldability zones are defined. Low-velocity impact (LVI) tests has been carried out at 5 different energy levels and the failure mechanisms were deduced using an in-situ high-speed camera and microscopic examination. Thin ply carbon/Elium® (TPC/EL) tubular configuration has shown a maximum increase of 18.3% in peak load compared to Thin ply carbon/Epoxy (TPC/EP) composite. TPC/EL composite has shown significantly higher absorbed energies 70.1%, 109.3% and 170% compared to TPC/EP composites while comparing the results at 12.5 J, 14.5 J and 17.5 J respectively. TPC/EL composite has also shown up to 70% higher major damage energy when impacted at significantly higher impact energies. The details of the failure mechanisms and understanding on the load and energy attributes of tubular composite structures are deliberated in this paper.