Analysis of unidirectional polyethylene-glass fiber-reinforced phenolic polymer composite laminate

Fiber-reinforced composite materials have become popular for items that need to be lightweight yet strong enough to sustain challenging loads. In this work, phenolic composite plates reinforced with polyethylene and glass fiber are statically and dynamically analyzed. With partly polymerized Resol/VAC-EHA, unidirectional hybrid laminates made of glass fibers (GF) and polyethylene fibers (PEF) are explored. The static response of polyethylene-Resol/VAC-EHA and glass-Resol/VAC-EHA-reinforced composites has been studied first using finite element technique. ANSYS 2022 is used to model the plates at varying volume fractions of fibers, and the findings are compared to published results. The modal analysis of the hybrid plates is presented next. The lay-up order and relative percentage of PEF and GF in laminates are varied keeping the overall volume fraction of fibers in the hybrid plates constant at about 35.6%. In both static and dynamic studies, the boundary condition is considered to be simply supported.