Experimental Study on the Compressive Strengths of Woven Glass-Epoxy Composites

Reliable experimental data on compressive strength of composite material are important, especially for designing structures having dominant compressive stresses, such as bolted joints. Composite materials usually have lower compressive strengths compared to tensile strengths. Woven composites added more complications. Initial waviness in woven composites makes the compressive strengths even much lower. Therefore, in this paper, experimental study on the compressive strengths of woven composites will be presented. The experiments used standard ASTM D3410M-03. Woven glass-epoxy will be tested extensively. The specimens were produced using standard hand layup techniques. Several layup configurations were tested, namely (0/90)s, (0/90/±45)s and (±45)s. The results showed that woven glass-epoxy generated failure modes specifically found in compressive tests of composites, such as: fiber micro-buckling, fiber crushing and shear band-formation. It was also found that unlike in the case of tensile tests, the layup configurations did not affect the compressive strength values. It seems that the fiber orientation will not affect significantly the compressive strengths. The epoxy matrix played more dominant role on the compressive behavior of woven glass-epoxy composites.