Dynamic mechanical response evaluation of woven carbon fiber reinforced rubber laminated composites under high strain rates

Woven carbon fiber reinforced rubber laminated composites (WCRLC) are increasingly adopted in impact-critical engineering applications such as marine fenders and aerospace buffers, owing to their lightweight and energy absorption/reflection capabilities. However, dynamic mechanical response evaluation of WCRLC under high strain rates remains inadequately characterized. In this study, WCRLC was fabricated using silicon rubber and 2D woven carbon fiber (WCF) with the needled technique. Dynamic mechanical response and energy evolution of WCRLC were investigated using a split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB). The results showed that the stress at both ends of the specimen was in a state of dynamic equilibrium. The peak compressive strength and toughness of WCRLC increased with an increase of strain rate. The energy analysis indicated that with the increase of the number of layers of WCF, WCRLC demonstrated better impact resistance performance including the dynamic toughness, the energy absorption, specific energy absorption, and dissipated to incident energy ratio. Transmitted energy ratio of the five types of WCRLC was less than 1%. The WCRLC with 3 layers of WCF exhibited the highest transmission energy ratio due to balanced fiber-matrix interaction.