Effect of fiber orientation, stress state and notch radius on the impact properties of short glass fiber reinforced polypropylene

Short glass fiber reinforced polypropylene (sgf-PP) is increasingly used in the automotive industry with the impact properties as key parameter. Experimentally, the impact behavior strongly depends on the specimen design, test set-up as well as temperature, and thus the characterization method should always be attuned to the occurring impact conditions of the final part. However, in order to deduce some general design criteria for sgf-PP, in this study a wide range of experimental parameters were investigated, specially focusing also on the effect of the governing, local fiber orientation distribution (FOD). Therefore, the effects of stress state (tensile, puncture and bending test), amount of stress concentration (notch radius) and temperature are characterized and discussed. The results proved that, as expected, distinctly different levels of impact strength and different dependencies on notches and notch radii are obtained for the various test set-ups. However, similarities in the temperature dependence are observed for specimens with similar governing fiber orientation.