International Journal of
Advanced Multidisciplinary Application

Volume 3, Issue 7

• Author(s)Priya V. Iyer
• AffiliationDepartment of Aerospace Engineering, Indira College of Engineering,Pune, India
• Page No.77-81
• Volume, Issue & YearVolume 3, Issue 7, July 2026
• Published On2026/07/08
• JournalInternational Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Application (IJAMA)
• ISSN No.3048-9350

Abstract

Fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites have progressively displaced conventional metallic alloys in structural aerospace, automotive, and marine applications owing to their exceptional specific strength, corrosion immunity, and design flexibility. Glass fibre-reinforced polymer (GFRP) laminates offer cost-effective stiffness and impact resistance, while carbon fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates deliver superior specific modulus and fatigue performance at premium material cost. Hybrid laminates interleaving glass and carbon fibre plies within a common epoxy matrix have been proposed as a route to balanced performance-cost optimisation — the hybrid effect, wherein the failure strain of the lower-elongation carbon fibre is enhanced by the adjacent glass layers, remains an active area of investigation. This study fabricates seven laminate configurations — neat epoxy control, GFRP at 2, 4, and 6 ply counts, CFRP at 2 and 4 plies, and a 4-ply symmetric glass–carbon–carbon–glass (GCCG) hybrid — by vacuum-assisted resin infusion (VARI) using LY556 epoxy with HY951 hardener. Properties evaluated include ultimate tensile strength, flexural strength (3-point bend), inter-laminar shear strength (ILSS), Charpy impact energy, water absorption at 672 hours, and storage modulus by Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA). Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) characterises thermal degradation onset temperature and char yield. The 4-ply CFRP laminate achieves the highest tensile and flexural strength (158.4 MPa and 186.2 MPa respectively) and storage modulus (42.1 GPa), while the hybrid GCCG-4L laminate achieves the highest impact energy absorbed (13.8 J) — 6.6× the neat epoxy baseline — at 90.3% of the CFRP-4L tensile strength, confirming a positive hybrid effect on impact resistance. Thermal analysis shows CFRP-4L onset degradation at 340°C versus 280°C for neat epoxy, with char residue of 38.2% reflecting carbon fibre retention. SEM of fracture surfaces confirms fibre pull-out and matrix cracking as dominant failure modes in GFRP, transitioning to fibre fracture and delamination in CFRP under tensile overload.

Keywords: GFRP, CFRP, hybrid composite, epoxy laminate, VARI, tensile strength, inter-laminar shear, impact energy, TGA, DMA, SEM, aerospace composites

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