Search

Recently, composites are widely used for interior panel of the transportation facilities such as railway vehicle, ships and aircraft, etc. These interior composites panels are often made by vacuum bagging, hand lay-up method and autoclave, etc. In this study, we carried out tests for the evaluation of material properties of the panels under more severe conditions than real environment to evaluate the dimension stability of the interior composite panels. Two sets of panels, one made by hand lay-up method with glass mat/polyester resin (Type 1), and the other, by vacuum bagging method with epoxy prepreg/NOMEX (Type 2) are exposed to the low temperature, high temperature and room temperature. And then we measured the dimensions of the strained panels. To monitor the characteristics of cured resin, we used DSC (Differential Scanning Calorimeter). It was observed that Type 2 has higher mechanical properties and dimensional stability than Type 1.

A summary of the experimental fatigue characterization of FRP composite bridge decks at two extreme temperatures [-30 ° C (-22 ° F) and 50 ° C (122 ° F)] is presented. Each deck was initially subjected to one million wheel load cycles at low temperature and another one million cycles at high temperature [1,2]. The results presented in this paper correspond to the fatigue response of each deck for four million load cycles at low temperature and another four million cycles at high temperature. Thus, the each deck was subjected to a total of ten million cycles. Progressive degradation in stiffness with cycling was noted for each deck. Comparisons of responses were made between the different FRP composite deck configurations and materials.