Influence of Substrate Location on Mechanical Behaviour of Glass Fibre Composite Materials with Embedded Printed Electronics

This study investigated the mechanical behaviour of glass fibre epoxy composites withand without an embedded polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate used for printedelectronic applications, with the mechanical behaviour integrity studied under differentloading modes: three-point bending, tensile, and short-beam stress (SBS) tests. The mainobjective of this study was to investigate the influence of the substrate location withinthe laminate. Fracture profiles were observed by visual inspection during the mechanicaltests and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) after failure to identify differences in thedamage mechanisms and their propagation. Tensile tests indicated that embedding thePET substrate did not affect the ultimate strength of the laminate, while the bending andSBS tests indicated that the substrate integration reduced the bending strength and ILSSby 10% and 50%, respectively, depending on the substrate location.