An experimental investigation of the bearing strength of weft-knitted 1 × 1 rib glass fiber composites

An experimental study has been carried out to investigate the bearing strength of a weft-knitted 1 × 1 rib glass-fiber composite plate pinned-joint in three directions: 0°, 45° and 90°. The knitted fabrics used for the study are manufactured from the 200 tex glass yarn with epoxy resin and cured in a hot press machine. The experiments were carried out according to the ASTM D953 standard [1]. The ratio of the edge distance to the pin diameter (E/d), and the ratio of the specimen width to the pin diameter (W/d) were systematically varied during experiments. The results show that the bearing values obtained from the wale directions are stronger than the course and 45° directions. Additionally, each direction reaches their upper limit bearing strengths when E/d and W/d ratios are equal or greater than 4. The knitted fabric composite material gives nearly isotropic feature.