Study on the failure mechanism of 1060‐H112 aluminum alloy‐carbon/glass fiber laminate

Abstract Fiber‐metal laminates (FMLs) are attracting much attention from researchers as emerging aerospace materials. In this paper, 1060‐H112 aluminum alloy‐carbon/glass fiber laminates were prepared by vacuum bagging method. Subsequently, based on tensile, three‐point bending and low‐velocity impact experiments, the quasi‐static mechanical properties as well as the dynamic response to impact of the two fiber laminates were investigated. The results show that the carbon fiber metal laminate (CARALL) has stronger tensile strength and inter‐ply tensile consistency, while the glass fiber metal laminate (GLARE) has better bending resistance. The impact response of CARALL and GLARE is closely related to the impactor shape and impact energy. The peak loads of the FMLs increased with increasing impact energy over the range of impact energies tested. However, the peak load of CARALL is more sensitive to the impact energy, while the deformation of GLARE is more sensitive to the impact energy. With complete penetration of the impactor into the target, the fibers of GLARE were ductile fracture and fibers of CARALL were brittle fracture for the blunt impactor impact, while the fibers of both GLARE and CARALL were ductile fracture for the hemispherical impactor impact. Under the impact of both impactors, two types of FMLs showed matrix broken, delamination, and local debonding.