Development of pseudo-ductile hybrid composites with discontinuous carbon- and continuous glass prepregs

Sandwich (layer-by-layer) type hybridisation is a promising method to overcome the brittle and usually catastrophic failure of conventional composites. The new concept of combining discontinuous and continuous layers to improve the performance of hybrid composites is presented. The paper reports on the pseudo-ductility demonstrated with unidirectional discontinuous carbon/continuous glass sandwich hybrid composites. The stress-strain response of the new material architecture was analysed, and the pseudo yield strains of various specimen configurations were accurately predicted using an approach based on mode II energy release rate calculations. The effect of specimen thickness and carbon platelet length on the stress-strain response was studied and presented.