Experimental Study on Static and Fatigue Behavior of a Short Glass Fiber Reinforced Polypropylene

One approach of reducing vehicle weight is using composite materials. Fiber reinforced polypropylene is one of the most popular composite materials. To improve accuracy in prediction of durability performance of structures made of this kind of composite material, static and fatigue properties of a 30% fiber reinforced polypropylene have been physically studied. This paper describes details of test coupon design, fabrication and test setup of both quasi static and fatigue tests. In this study, various fiber orientation (0, 20, 90 degrees & knit line), temperature (-40, 23 and 80 degree C), mean stress (R=-1.0, -0.5, -0.2, 0.1 and 0.4) have been considered and the result of the tests discussed.