Study on Bending Damage of Intra-Ply Basalt/Nylon Hybrid Composites

Basalt fiber offers an economic alternative to carbon fiber for the manufacture of composite parts. In this research, homogenous and intra-ply hybrid composites of basalt and nylon fibers have been produced in order to investigate the effects of bending speed and fiber volume ratio on the bending damage of composite structure. Five different types of woven fabric as reinforcement and different volume percentages of nylon including 0, 25, 33.33, 50 and 100% were used. All composites consisted of six-ply laminates were prepared using hand lay-up method. Three-point bending test was used in this research. The residual tensile strength values was employed in order to study the amount of bending damage of samples. The results demonstrated the highest residual tensile strength for the samples containing 33.33, 50 and 100% nylon fiber. Also, with increasing bending speed, the influence of the content of nylon and basalt on the residual tensile strength became more and more important.