The Interfacial Bond Strength in Glass Fibre-Polyester Resin Composite Systems

Abstract The interfacial bond strength in glass fibre-polyester resin composites has been investigated using various experimental techniques. These included blocks of resin containing fibre (in which, depending on the geometry of the specimen, failure occurs in either a shear or tensile mode) the pullout of a fibre from a disc of resin and a short beam shear test for interlaminar shear strength determination. Low power optical microscopy and optical retardation measurements of stress induced birefringence were used to detect the difference between intact and debonded fibre resin interfaces. The shear modulus and shear strength of the resin were obtained from torsion tests on cylindrical rods of the resin. The single fibre shear debonding specimen and the short beam shear test are shown to be the most viable test methods but interpretation of the results is complicated by the various modes of failure possible and by the different stress states which exist in the area of the specimen where debonding starts. Stress concentration factors obtained by finite element analysis and photoelastic analysis have been applied to the results from these tests and the corrected interfacial bond strengths are in close agreement. The real interfacial bond strengths of well bonded glass-fibre polyester resin systems is shown to be of the order of 70 MN m−2.