A Comparative Study of the Physical, Mechanical and Thermo-mechanical Behavior of GFRP Composite Based on Fabrication Techniques

The present study investigates the effect of fabrication techniques on the mechanical and thermo-mechanical behavior of bi-directional woven glass fiber epoxy composite for wind turbine blade application. The composites are fabricated by Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding (VARTM) and hand lay-up molding (HLM) techniques to identify the optimal performance output. The physical, mechanical and thermo-mechanical properties of the composites are evaluated for the samples fabricated by both the tecniques. It is observed that tensile strength, inter-laminar shear strength (ILSS) and flexural strength of the composites fabricated by VARTM technique are 405.62 MPa, 23.35 MPa and 239.3878 MPa respectively whereas composites fabricated by HLM technique shows slightly lower tensile strength (351.28 MPa), ILSS (16.75 MPa) and flexural strength (221.92 MPa). The intra-laminar mode-I fracture toughness test is also performed using compact tension specimen. The critical stress intensity factor (K-IC) and critical strain energy release rate (G(IC)) are observed to be higher for VARTM composites. At the end, the dynamic mechanical analysis is performed to understand the material behavior and structural characteristics of these composites in high-temperature environment. This investigation purely governs the small-scale wind turbine blade structure in two different extreme climates from ambient to sustainable temperature.