Study on Mechanical Behavior of Double Corrugation Surface Structure of Thermoset Composite

Transforming the thin-wall structure from 2D to 3D to enhance the flexibility and strength of materials is an interesting research area regarding fabricating techniques and engineering properties. This study investigated the double corrugation surface structure for fiberglass-reinforced epoxy thermoset composite to improve the mechanical properties of designed composite materials. Three groups of corrugated samples (2, 4, and 6 layers) were fabricated for testing. The resulting corrugated thermoset composites were tested through tensile and compressive tests. The results illustrated that the tensile strength of a flat sample was 14.28% and 27.74% higher than the one of the double corrugated surface samples on the x-axis and y-axis directions, respectively. Then, the design showed a tremendous increase in the elongation of more than 13 times compared to the flat sample at a relatively slight expense of strength. Besides, the result also showed that the material's compressive strength improved drastically when the number of layers increased from two to six. It was presented that the increase in the number of double corrugated surface structure layers leads to a rise in energy absorption. Therefore, the highest energy absorption was 241.62 J of 6 layers-double corrugated surface sample.