Repeatability of glass fiber reinforced polymer laminate panels manufactured by hand lay-up and vacuum-assisted resin infusion

The paper presents a comparison of the test results for the fiber volume fraction, static bending and Charpy impact strength of glass fiber reinforced polymer laminates reinforced by 0/90 fabric and chopped strand mat, produced by the hand lay-up and the vacuum-assisted resin infusion (VARI) method. The laminates were produced under equivalent conditions, with polyester matrix and lay-up areal mass 2100-g/m2. In the comparison of the obtained measurement results, similar mechanical performance was stated in the case of the hand lay-up and the VARI production. However, significantly smaller scatter of results and better uniformity of the reinforcement in the matrix with smaller amount of local structure defects was observed for the samples obtained by VARI method. The laminates obtained by VARI method show a much more advantageous coefficient of variation than that of the hand lay-up method, especially in the case of the mat reinforcement.