Analysis of ultimate strength of defective glass fiber reinforced composite subjected to bending

The present paper contains an experimental investigation to find out the residual strength of different composite members, which is subjected to flexure loading. The three-point bending test was performed to load glass-fiber-reinforced laminated composites, which was fabricated defected. E-glass/epoxy composite specimens have been fabricated using hand layup technique by adding multiple delaminations in transverse and longitudinal directions. The delamination length has been kept 15.5% of the total length of the beam in the fabricated samples. [90°20], and [90°32] stacking sequence were selected for the laminated beams to perform tests. The influence of delamination on the ultimate strength of the damaged laminated composite beams has been investigated. The results obtained herein can be coupled with the damage characterization by non-destructive evaluation for condition monitoring.