Development and characterisation of reparable, film-interleaved, pseudo-ductile hybrid composites

The recent developments in pseudo-ductility demonstrated the possibility of making composites safe and suitable for high-performance applications. Repairing damage in composites is an attractive challenge for the industry, as it may increase the reliability of composites and reduce the waste generated by components damaged locally. In this paper, we interleaved polyamide 12 (PA12) films in discontinuous carbon/epoxy – continuous glass/epoxy hybrid composites to i) increase their interlaminar toughness and make them more damage tolerant, and ii) repair delamination damage by heating the samples and exploit the re-bonding feature of the thermoplastic interleaves. The developed repairing method successfully restored the original pseudo-ductile behaviour in the tested hybrid laminates. We studied the parameters affecting the repairing process to maximise the repairing efficiency. We present the design process in detail to ease the introduction of reparable pseudo-ductile composites in the industry.