Damage of flexural loaded composite beams subjected to fire

ABSTRACT

Fibre reinforced polymers are used extensively for automobile, marine and infra-structure applications. For these applications, fire events and the resulting effects on the struc-tural integrity are of considerable concern. The strength of composite structures subjected to fire is strongly dependent on the exposure time and the load. In order to verify the mechanical re-sponse, the flexural behaviour of the material was investigated experimentally. The problems of predicting the thermal-mechanical behaviour of polymer composite materials may be divided into two different parts: the internal processes and the external boundary conditions. The inter-nal processes include all physical and chemical processes which can occur in a laminate. The external boundary conditions implicate the shape, size and the ambient conditions of the tested specimen. Allowing for this separation, thermal properties of reinforced polymers have been studied for a polyester based composite and additional furnace tests have been carried out. A further step has been taken to reduce the gap in the understanding of composites investigating the combined effect of mechanical loading and thermal loading due to fire.