Investigation of the mechanical behavior and vibration characteristics of thin walled glass/carbon hybrid composite beams under a fixed-free boundary condition

ABSTRACT

In the present work, woven fabric glass laminate is modified by interplying high modulus carbon fabric layers for improving the stiffness to weight ratio to enable good performance in dynamic conditions. The glass, carbon, and hybrid of glass/carbon laminates were fabricated with two different stacking sequences by hand layup method and tested for evaluating the mechanical properties with considerable trials. The vibration characteristics of composite beams were experimentally studied by impulse excitation techniques under fixed-free boundary conditions. The stacking sequence of beams influences the mechanical properties and vibration characteristics. The modal response of tested samples are compared and discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Hybrid beams
• free vibration
• loss factor
• modal frequency
• mode shape
• combined stiffness and damping