Electrospinning is regarded as one of the most efficient processes to generate one-dimensional nano structures. The electrospinning process is simple and provides consistent mass production of nanofibers. The scalability of the electrospinning process has an excellent potential to fulfill the high volume requirements of nanofibers in the infrastructure applications. The present work emphasizes the use of interleaved electrospun nanofibers in fiber glass composite beams. The Flexural behavior of a simply supported beam under a centrally concentrated loading is studied. Flexural properties of a fiber glass composite beam with interleaved electrospun nanofibers are compared with a fiber glass composite beam without electrospun nanofibers. The material configuration of the composite beams is: woven E-glass fabric prepregs with a low temperature molding resin. In addition, interleaved between the plies are TEOS (Tetra Ethyl Orthosilicate) electrospun nanofibers. The nanofibers were produced by developing optimized operating process parameters and a stabilized sintering temperature cycle to ensure consistency in the fiber morphology and pore structure. The successful integration of the electrospun nanofibers within the prepreg layers was obtained by pre-impregnation with a B-staged resin film and de-bulking to remove excessive resin prior to vacuum bagging. A series of mechanical Flexure tests were performed per the ASTM D7264 standard specification. Micrographs were obtained to study the progressive deformation and damage mechanics due to flexural loading in the specimens and clearly illustrate the differences in the failure mechanism with and without the electrospun interface layers.
Numerical Investigation of Structural Behaviour of Timber-Glass Composite Beams