A review on fabrication techniques and tensile properties of glass, carbon, and Kevlar fiber reinforced rolymer composites

The reduction of both energy consumption and production/maintenance costs in the industry requires the use of advanced engineering materials with remarkable features, including lightweight and long-term service life. As one of the advanced engineering materials, composites are widely applied in industry and civilian daily life. Nevertheless, there are some mechanical factors such as tensile strength restricting the application of such a material. To this end, this study is aimed to comprehensively review the recent research on the effects of fabrication characteristics on the tensile resistance of GFRP, CFRP, and AFRP composites. As revealed by recent progress, the epoxy resin is an advisable option for the production of high-performance polymeric composites due to the remarkable tensility, compression, and corrosion resistance. However, the high cost of epoxy resin is not favorable for mass production. In hybrid composites, stacking sequence is a vital factor that determines the ultimate tensile strength. In terms of higher mechanical performance, some researchers suggested using Kevlar fibers with woven orientation alongside the Carbon as axial fibers. At the same time, it is essential to carefully establish the value of fiber volume fraction. Otherwise, this can lead to dramatic internal defects such as agglomeration. In general, this review article was performed to investigate the impacts of composite fabrication characteristics such as fabrication method, reinforcing fibers orientation, fiber type, matrix phase type, and volume fraction of reinforcing phase on the tensile properties of composites used in aerospace, military, civil constructions, and automotive applications. In addition, the authors tried their best to make this research a credible source in the field of mechanical properties of CFRP, GFRP, and AFRP composites for future studies of other researchers.