Hygrothermal Ageing Influence on BVI-Damaged Carbon/Epoxy Coupons under Compression Load.

Composite materials usage in several industrial fields is now widespread, and this leads to the necessity of overcoming issues that are still currently open. In the aeronautic industry, this is especially true for Barely Visible Impact Damage (BVID) and humidity uptake issues. BVID is the most insidious kind of impact damage, being rather common and not easily detectable.

Effect of Thermal Ageing on the Mechanical Strength of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Epoxy Composites.

Applications of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) at temperatures over 150-200 °C are becoming common in aerospace and automotive applications. Exposure of CFRP to these temperatures can lead to permanent changes in their mechanical properties. In this work, we investigated the effect of thermal ageing in air on the strength of carbon fabric/epoxy composites.