Mechanical performance of a novel glass fiber reinforced maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene composite and its thermoplastic-based fiber metal laminates

In this article, continuous glass fiber reinforced thermoplastic prepreg is proposed using maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (MAPP) as the matrix resin. The compression molding parameters and plying sequences are optimized. Under the process parameters of 155 degrees C and 15 MPa, both the tensile and flexural properties achieve the maximum values, and the plying sequence of (0 degrees/90 degrees) possess a balanced mechanical performance. Then, MAPP/GF/Al fiber-metal laminates are further fabricated in two stacking configurations of 2/1 and 3/2. The mechanical results showed that the tensile and bending strength were basically maintained, while the modulus are significantly enhanced by 114.9% and 135.4% in 2/1 and 3/2 fiber metal laminates (FMLs) in contrast with MAPP/GF controls. In addition, the large deflection behavior in bending test for FMLs suggest that MAPP/GF and aluminum alloy show a synergy deformation due to the good bonding between metal layer and thermoplastic resin. The optical microstructure also revealed that the interlaminar adhesion are well joined between FML constituents. The findings in this study are important from a design viewpoint of FMLs because of the lower material cost, less processing time, and good lightweight effect, which potentially be tailored to use as structural parts in automobile applications.