17. Composites¶
This week, Aarush and Charlie worked on composites together. As a part of this process, we produced a test coupon to represent the vacuum bagging process. Since our lab is not equipped with any formal force measurement tools or stages, our best idea was to make a simple rectangular piece with 3 walls and squeeze it in a clamp. Just like Charlie’s part, the test piece was made from 4 layers of linen.
And here are pictures of the test we ran.
While not a quantitative method, this did give us a decent idea of the strength/flexibility of the composites we created. We did not stress the material so far as to shatter it, but you may notice in the last frame that the material seemed to have some memory to it. This means that we passed the materials’ yield strength but not its ultimate strength.