Influence of SMA reinforcement on the impact resistance of GFRP composite laminates under different temperatures

Plain glass fibre-reinforced polymeric (GFRP) laminates and GFRP reinforced with randomly oriented short strips of shape memory alloy (SMA) were prepared by hand lay-up method. The SMA strip reinforcement was placed at 0.75 × thickness of the laminate with weight fractions of 2, 4 and 6%. The specimens were exposed to drop weight impact test and the experiments were conducted at a constant impact velocity of 2.80 m s−1 with different test temperatures such as 303, 333 and 363 K. The impact damage area was evaluated using lighting technique and fracture response was analysed using scanning electron microscopic (SEM) images. Absorption of impact energy and damage area due to low velocity impact were calculated. It was observed that with the higher temperature, the SMA/GFRP laminates exhibit marginally-enhanced damage resistance compared to the plain GFRP laminates. Also, addition of SMA reinforcement was not contributing much to the impact resistance at higher temperature.