Specific Energy Absorption Evaluation on GFRP Laminate Plate by Optical, Thermographic and Tomographic Analysis

Over the years, a large number of studies have been carried out on glass fiber composite materials in order to analyze their impact behavior. This is very important for the automotive applications, for example for bumper or crash-box. This paper presents the analysis performed on GFRP (Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer) laminated plate specimens (epoxy matrix reinforced with E-glass, twill woven, 200 g/m2) subjected to drop impact tests. The tests have been conducted at two different impact speeds in Low Impact Velocity LVI maintaining the same impact energy to estimate the strain-rate effect. All the tests were performed referring to ASTM 7136 at standard ambient temperature. Then the SEA (Specific Energy Absorption) of the specimens was calculated, using three different non-destructive measurement techniques (Optical Analysis, IRThermography and X-ray Computed) to analyze the surfaces of rupture and the specimen interlaminar damages. The chosen geometry of the specimens allowed to reduce the costs and to use a simplest test bench giving additional information to the material behavior.