Processing, Properties, and Uses of Lightweight Glass Fiber/Aluminum Hybrid Structures

Introduction

During the last few decades, a strong need in the aircraft industry for high-performance, lightweight materials has motivated an increasing trend towards the progress of improved types for fiber-metal laminates (FMLs). These materials are exhibiting several advantageous structural, physical, and mechanical characteristics as given in Table 1. These FMLs are hybrid composite materials constituted from interweaving thin metallic layers and fiber-reinforced thermoplastic or thermoset-based polymer composites (FRPC) adhesives.

Due to their outstanding mechanical and physical properties, engineering fibers such as carbon, glass, and Kevlar are widely used to reinforce metallic laminates like aluminum and titanium to produce high-performance lightweight hybrid structures. Table 2 compares the advantages and shortcoming characteristics of these fibers. The market of these sandwich composite contains several commercially-models of FMLs such as the CARALL (Carbon Reinforced Aluminium Laminate), based on carbon fibres, the ARALL (Aramid Reinforced Aluminium Laminate), containing aramid fibres, and the GLARE (Glass Reinforced Aluminium Laminate), containing stronger glass fibres. By combining the striking properties of the hybrid feature from their two main components: metals (usually aluminium) and fiber-reinforced polymer laminate, these materials demonstrated many outstanding performances including lightweight, superior mechanical tensile and bending properties, a good damage tolerance to fatigue crack development, and impact damage, especially for aeronautic part productions (Sinmazçelik et al., 2011).