Mechanical and fatigue properties study on advanced composite engineering materials

The use of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polyer (CFRP) composite has been increasing over the recent decades as research have found that they have significant mechanical attributes compared to conventional metals such as its strength to weight ratio and corrosion resistance. As CFRPs are increasingly used as main load bearing components, the effects of fatigue and cyclic loads must be studied. This report presents a novel method to relate mainly low cycle fatigue life of CFRPs with electrical resistance. In this project, quasi isotropic and unidirectional CFRP samples were tested at varying stress levels and number of cycles while measuring the electrical resistance of the sample longitudinally. Results show that the electrical resistance generally decrease as the number of cycles increase, with a higher rate of decrease initially followed by a relatively constant lower rate of decrease. It was found that the higher rate of decrease stops at a characteristic time, with it happening earlier at higher stress levels and the absolute change in resistance between R0 at the start and R at the characteristic time, increases with higher loads. The observed trends could be used as a platform for further research and is discussed in the report, as well as recommendations for future experiments.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering