Electrical and shear constitutive response of conductive glass fibre/epoxy composites

Electrical and shear behaviour of electrically conductive glass fibre/epoxy composites is studied under interlaminar shear loading. A well-connected network is developed by dispersing carbon nanotubes in the matrix and reinforcing micro carbon fibres between the glass laminates. The effect of carbon fibre length and their densities on the electrical and shear behaviour of the composite is investigated. Although interlaminar shear strength was increased by 20% with addition of carbon fibres, they failed to bridge the delamination between the laminates. For all composite types, there is no change in resistance during elastic deformation due to the formation of new contacts between the CNTs. However, during the non-linear deformation, the carbon fibres debonding and micro-crack coalescence increased resistance steadily for all cases. The composites of shorter carbon fibres showed a higher slope in the resistance change and a maximum peak resistance change compared to that of longer carbon fibres.