Behaviour of composite plates with drilled and moulded hole under tensile load

Drilling of composite material causes damages of different natures. To avoid machining in composite material, it is proposed to include holes while moulding. In the literature, there is few works concern the behaviour analysis of specimens with moulded holes. All the literature works concern a specimens with moulded holes made of woven fabric. Moreover no literature is available on local behaviour of specimens around the hole. In this paper, several mechanical tests are carried out on specimens with quasi-isotropic stacking sequence made from UD prepreg with drilled holes and with moulded holes. To analyse the behaviour of the specimens around the hole, the strain field is measured using three-dimensional Digital Image Correlation technique (DIC). The pictures analysed given by the CCD camera reveal that, the damage mechanisms are different between the plates with drilled holes and those with moulded holes. The SEM observation have shown that, the fibre content and porosity content near the hole is around ≈ 8% higher compared to the values obtained far the hole. Moreover the tensile strength of the plates with moulded holes is 28% higher than with drilled holes.