Revista de Ciências e Engenharia de Materiais

Low Velocity Impact of Filament-Wound Glass-Fiber Reinforced Composite Pipes

Abstract

Khan Z, Naik MK, Al-Sulaiman F and Merah N

Low velocity single-bounce impact tests have been conducted on filament-wound glass fiber reinforced/vinylester and glass fiber reinforced/epoxy composite pipes. An instrumented drop weight testing system was used for the impact testing. The tests were performed on 300 mm long sections of 150 mm diameter pipes having 6 mm wall thickness. The impact energy required to just initiate the damage in glass fiber reinforced/epoxy pipes was found to be larger than the energy needed for glass fiber reinforced/vinylester pipe. The load-time curves also reveal that vinyl ester-based pipes exhibit a ductile failure under impact, whereas, in the epoxy-based pipes the failure was rather brittle in nature.