The influence of temperature on the low-velocity impact response of polyamide 6/basalt plain fabric laminates

Literature reports several works concerning the impact response of thermoplastic composites reinforced with woven fibres and involved dissipation mechanisms. However, although a significant temperature effect is expected on the impact behaviour of these materials, to the best of our knowledge, a limited number of experimental studies are focused on this aspect, and the most of them concern thermosetting composites. For this purpose, this research deals with experimental tests performed on a polyamide 6/woven basalt fibers composite specimens by a drop weight-testing machine, at four different temperatures (room temperature, 40°C, 80°C and 100°C), selected around the glass transition temperature (Tg) of the matrix. It was verified that the temperature influences the impact behaviour of the basalt composite even if a value of threshold seems to be achieved at T=80° C. This probably happens because the Tg of the tested composite matrix has been exceeded. Furthermore, dynamic-mechanical tests conducted on specimens from both the reference composite laminates and plates with equal thickness of the pure matrix, these latters obtained under optimal hot pressing of stacked PA6 films, demonstrated outstanding improvements in terms of moduli as well as superior damping ability of the composite structure.