Short beam strength properties of multistitched biaxial woven E-glass/polyester nano composites

The aim of this study was to understand the warp and weft directional short beam strength properties of the developed two-dimensional multistitched multilayer E-glass/polyester woven nano composites. The warp and weft directional specific short beam strengths of unstitched structures were lower than those of the multistitched/nano structures. When the amount of nano silica material in the unstitched E-glass/polyester composite structure increased, the warp and weft directional specific short beam strengths of the unstitched/nano structures increased. When the stitching direction increased from two to four directions, the warp and weft directional short beam strengths of all hand-stitched structures slightly increased. In addition, the warp and weft directional short beam strengths of high modulus (stitching yarn Kevlar® 129) lightly and densely machine-stitched structures were slightly higher than those of the low modulus (stitching yarn Nylon 6.6) lightly and densely machine-stitched structures. All composite structures had interlaminar shear failure between layers in their cross-sections, but the interlaminar shear failure in machine-stitched and machine-stitched/nano structures did not propagate to the large areas. The stitching direction, stitching density, stitching yarn, stitching type, and amount of nano materials in the composite structures were identified as important parameters.