A tensile characterization of random glass fiber/metal laminates composites

This study presents the tensile characterization of fiber metal laminate (FML) which is reinforced using random chopped fiber glass with thermosetting epoxy while the metal used is the aluminum alloy 5010. The shortage in studies about the characterization of the random chopped FML is the motivation of this study. The characterization is applied in terms of thickness of the aluminum alloy sheets (0.5, 0.7, and 1 mm), and stacking oflayers (2/1, 3/2, and 4/3). The studied FML is manufactured using hand lay-up method. The experimental results show that the random chopped FML tensile properties improve as the Al layers' thickness increases and as the stacking number decreases. The 2/1 FML stacking with 2.97 mm thickness gives the highest values of ultimate tensile strength (123.8 MPa) and young's modulus (54.65 GPa) respectively. There is a reasonable agreement between the theoretical and the experimental values of young's modulus with percentage not exceeding 20% while wide scatter, inconsistent agreement in the ultimate tensile strength with percentage ranging from (33% to 110%). The microscopically examination of failed samples show that integrity without separation, aluminum fracture, matrix cracking, fiber breakage, fiber pull out, and delamination are observed.