Mechanical behavior and long-term life prediction of carbon/epoxy and glass/epoxy composite laminates under artificial seawater environment

This paper presents an investigation on the long-term performance of carbon/epoxy and glass/epoxy laminates in an artificial seawater environment with 3.5% salinity. Accelerated aging tests were conducted at 60 °C for 45 days to characterize the long-term effect of seawater on the mechanical response of fiber-reinforced composite laminates. Several mechanical tests including tensile and 3-point bending tests have been carried out on the reference/dry and aged standard samples at room temperature and 60 °C to evaluate tensile strength, young's modulus, flexural strength, secant and chord modulus of elasticity in the composite samples. The long-term behavior of carbon/epoxy and glass/epoxy samples under the service construction condition in the coast of Ireland was also predicted using Arrhenius degradation theory.