Chemical ageing effects on the ply and laminate strength of a filament wound cross-ply GFRP

Abstract This work presents a numerical approach to multi-routines based on experiments to analyse the effects on the strength of a cross-ply glass fibre reinforced plastics (GFRP) after immersion in sulphuric acid solution under pressure (5% H 2 SO 4 solution, 95° C, 15 bar). Two alternative vinyl ester resins (bisphenol-A diglycidyl ether and epoxy phenol novolac) were investigated. After 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2 years of conditioning, the specimens were mechanically tested. The definition of the material at multi-scale and its virtual conditioning were performed in a finite element (FE) model. The Hashin 3D failure criterion was implemented by coding the UMAT subroutine of the Abaqus software. Experimental results demonstrated better performance of the bisphenol-A vinyl ester resin-based GFRP when a thinner barrier layer is used. The numerical results indicated that the shear strength properties were the most susceptible to presenting a tendency for change respect to failures values after one year.