Investigating the Mechanical Properties of Cast Aluminium Rods Reinforced with Wet Filament Winding

Metal rods and pipes are often reinforced with dry and wet windings of fibre strands on their surfaces. Many research works had been carried out on this. However, this work investigates the impact energy, tensile, compressive and fatigue properties of aluminium rod without fibre winding, and aluminium rods reinforced with wet filaments made of carbon, glass and copper fibres impreginated in epoxy resin. As compared to 4.2 J impact energy displayed by unreinforced rod, rods with carbon, glass and copper windings yielded 4.7, 5.3 and 5.6 J respectively. The respective ultimate tensile strengths are 144.1, 160.8, 155.2and 227.3 MPa. Thus the corresponding percentage elongations are 10.40, 5.85, 7.55 and 3.95%. However, the corresponding ultimate compressive strengths are 111.3, 112.5, 118.5 and 122.1 MPa. Increase in fatigue stress amplitude was observed to reduce the fatigue life (number of cycles-to-failure, Nf) of the specimens, Fatigue limit of unreinforced specimen increases from 35 to 70, 105 and 175 MPa with carbon, glass and copper windings. And endurance limit correspondingly increase from 105.0 to 105.5, 106.6 and 107.5 cycles-to-failure The findings in this work show that carbon, glass and copper filament windings offer remarkable resistance to impact, tensile compressive and fatigue deformations of the unreinforced rod.