Tensile and Bending Behaviour of Steel–Glass Fibre-Reinforced and Non-Reinforced Steel–Polyamide Sandwich Materials

Abstract

The newly-developed thermoplastic-based fibre metal laminates (T-FML) show good prospects for their application in the automotive industry because of their lightweight potential and thermal formability. This paper focuses on describing the tensile and bending properties of this hybrid material as structural components for load-bearing parts in vehicles. For this purpose, the uniaxial tensile and four-point bending behaviours of steel/glass fibre-reinforced polyamide 6 (GF-PA6)/steel-laminates are investigated. The effects of cover/core layer thickness ratio and fibre weaving style on their tensile and bending properties are considered, while the span-to-thickness ratio was kept constant. Testing of the mono-materials and laminates of Metal/PA6/Metal (MPM) is performed to be considered as a reference. Further, the analytical method is validated to predict the bending properties of the laminates. A good agreement between the analytical values and experimental results regarding the bending strength and modulus is revealed. T-FML showed better tensile and bending properties with increasing fibre content compared to the GF-PA6 mono-organosheet and MPM.