Composite materials are widely used and most developing in recent days because of their lightweight and high stiffness ratio. They are also good replacing materials to the conventional material like alloys and steels. Composites are plays important role in the aerospace department and future is going full parts are replaced with composites in the airplane structure. Comparing to earlier stage the matrix and prepreg materials have advanced improvement in the department of composites. For reducing the noise and vibration in the mechanical and structural systems the polymer composites are gives the excellent solution. The ultimate strength of the pultruded rods before and after aging treatments the carbon fibre rods present much higher ultimate tensile strength than glass fibre ones in both the pristine condition as well as after hydrothermal conditioning. 

Basalt fibre (BF) is newly developing composite material and it is environment friendly and inorganic material. And this fibre is having the strengthen construction when compared to the carbon fibre, aramid fibre. It exhibits competitive properties when compared the conventional materials. BF’s are produced from the basalt rock, common rock from the earth crust. It is biologically inert and weathering increases the mineral content of soil. And used for the transportation and storage of corrosive liquids and gases. The important advantage of this is having the high UV radiation and seawater resistance. The characteristic property of basalt fibre is having the higher strength and modulus also a low when compare to the CFRP. But there are limited application due to the lack of sufficient and difficulty of understanding the mechanical and chemical properties. Basalt fibre is composed of the minerals plagioclase, pyroxene and olivine it is having better physic mechanical properties than the fiberglass. It is also natural raw material and initially melted to the state of super fluent magma. This process of basalt melting does not contain the operations that are specific for glass melting and clearing. The mechanical properties of the composite laminates containing the voids can be sensibly lower the compared to the void free condition. Voids were shown to affect the tensile, compressive and bending behaviour of unidirectional, multidirectional and woven laminates, as well as the out of plane properties such as the inter-laminar shear strength and fracture toughness. The decrease in mechanical performances was sometimes related to the change in the damage mechanism in the presence of voids. In fact, the composites are used to dynamic structures where lightweight materials are particularly desirable to increase efficiency and decrease energy consumption. The testing conditions involving a combination of suitably applied external loads, a situation which can be referred as external multiaxiality. The uniaxial behaviour of composites can be treated as a particular case of a more general multiaxial situation. Multiaxial stress state is always present in the composite components, even under uniaxial loading due to the intrinsic material anisotropy.

The numerical and experimental study on mechanical properties of composite solid rod using basalt fibre is widely investigated. The ply angle and stacking sequence has a considerable effect on the buckling torque. In the effect of fibre reinforcement on torsional behaviour in the composite layer has been experimentally investigated in terms of the fabrication method of VARTM. Composite structures for conventional metallic structures have many advantages because of higher specific stiffness and higher specific strength of composite materials. One piece automotive hybrid aluminium/composite drive shaft was developed with a new manufacturing method, in which a carbon fibre epoxy composite layer from being damaged by external impact and absorption of moisture. The stacking sequence of the composite layer is determined by considering the thermal residual stresses of interface between the aluminium tube and the composite layer which is calculated by the finite element analysis.

MAFTREE are capable to investigate the basalt and glass fibre based composites for their tensile and compression strength characterisation. Our facilities can be used for manufacture, finishing and research of consolidation quality using Ultrasonic Non-Destructive Technique. Why you wait, give us a shout now.

Credit: S. Sowndarya