j m a t e r r e s t e c h n o l .

2 0 1 8;7(1):89–95

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Original Article

Experimental investigation of span length for

flexural test of fiber reinforced polymer composite
laminates

Akhil Mehndiratta a,∗ , Spandan Bandyopadhyaya b , Vijaya Kumar c , Dhiraj Kumar a

a Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India
b Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, West Bengal, India
c Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bangalore, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Testing and evaluation of mechanical properties for FRP (Fiber Reinforced Polymer) com-
Received 7 March 2016 posite parts play a significant role to qualify it for the end use. Among the mechanical
Accepted 21 June 2017 properties, the flexural strength is significant and vital as it may vary with specimen depth,
Available online 3 November 2017 temperature and the test span length. The flexural strength varies for different materials
with varying the test span length hence the current work aims to find an optimum span
Keywords: length to test flexural strength for the specimens made of Glass (7781, EC9756) and Carbon
Carbon (HTA7, G801) prepreg materials. Experiments are conducted as per the ASTM Standard D
Glass 790 for flexural test by varying the span lengths to understand the behavior of the flexural
Flexural strength and flexural modulus. The experimental data were compared with those obtained
Prepreg from the finite element program software Altair Hyper works 14.0. The results indicate that
Span length flexural modulus increases with the span length to a point and then it decreases. Thereby,
FEA an optimum span length can be obtained for testing flexural strength, which will be useful
to the designers and the composite manufacturers to accomplish better standard testing
procedures.
© 2018 Brazilian Metallurgical, Materials and Mining Association. Published by Elsevier
Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

semi rigid materials. However, flexural strength cannot be

1. Introduction determined for those materials that do not break or that do not
fail in the outer surface of the test specimen within the 5.0%
Flexural or bending test can be used to get a semi qualitative
strain limit. These test methods utilize either a three-point
idea of the fiber/matrix interfacial strength of a composite.
or four-point loading system to a simply supported beam.
The flexural tests are conducted to determine the mechanical
Park et al. [1] have carried few studies on the changes in flex-
properties of resin and laminated fiber composite materials.
ural strength with the change in stacking sequence of aramid
These test methods are generally applicable to both rigid and
fiber composite laminates. They found that the flexural fail-
ure mechanism, which had an effect on the flexural strength,
∗ depends on the stacking sequence. Christiansen et al. [2] have
Corresponding author.
E-mail: akhilm.ratta@gmail.com (A. Mehndiratta). investigated the effect of testing variables and the volume
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmrt.2017.06.010
2238-7854/© 2018 Brazilian Metallurgical, Materials and Mining Association. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access
article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
90 j m a t e r r e s t e c h n o l . 2 0 1 8;7(1):89–95
fraction of fibers on the three-point bend testing of glass fiber-
reinforced composite laminates. They found that the flexural
strength obeys a simple law of mixture relationship with fiber
loading but the shear strengths were independent of fiber
loading. Variation in the amount of overhang had no effect
on the shear strength of the composites, but they have not
evaluated the effect of variation in span length on flexural
strength. Nunes et al. [3] have carried studies on polymeric
matrix composite discs supported on three points subjected
to a bending test to study their behavior in complex flexural
loading situations. These authors [3] noticed that the flexural
behavior of the composites varies on fiber orientation, lam-
inate stacking and surface waviness. Grande et al. [4] have
carried studies to evaluate whether the span/diameter ratio
(L/D) would affect the mechanical properties of fiber reinforced
composite posts. They noticed that the span diameter ratio
is an important parameter for the interpretation of flexural
strength and flexural modulus. Valarinho et al. [5] conducted
experiments to study the flexural behavior of multi span com-
posite beams made of annealed glass panes reinforced with
GFRP. They mentioned that the ultimate load and the post-
cracking performance of the multi span composite beams are
affected by the type of the adhesive used to bond the GRFP
to glass panes. Studies on the flexural fatigue behavior and
enhancement of residual strength in 2D cross-ply carbon fiber
reinforced carbon composites were done to show that the
three-point bending fracture in both unfatigued and fatigued
specimens is of delamination mode [6]. Few research has been
done on short fiber reinforced composites to study the effect
of flexural strength with different span lengths. It was found
that as the span length reduces the flexural properties showed
linear reduction [7]. Few studies have been reported earlier to
analyze the effects of the specimen thickness and width on
the flexural modulus in general for a composite laminate using
Ansys [8]. However, the effect of the testing span length was
not considered and the testing span length set for one class
of material will not be the same for other types of laminates.
Kumar et al. [9] conducted experiments to study the impact
of the UTM testing speed on the inter-laminar shear stress
and the flexural strength on fiber composites. Singh et al. [10]
have carried experiments and found that with increasing in
weight fraction of reinforcement, the tensile strength and flex-
ural strength increased by 14.5% and 123.65% for 20% glass
reinforced composites over pure epoxy. Haldar et al. [11] inves-
tigated the behavior of curved sandwich composite structures
by performing flexural test for two different radii of curvature.
Stiffness, strength and failure initiation were predicted using
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and the numerical simulations
were verified with the experimental measurements. Alander
et al. [12] have carried experiments to find flexural strength
and flexural modulus of fiber-reinforced composite (FRC) spec-
imens of rectangular and circular cross-sections with varying
span length (L) to diameter (D) ratio. On the basis of their
results, it was concluded that by increasing L/D ratio, the
flexural strength and flexural modulus increased for shorter
span length up to 20 mm. Hence the testing method, speci-
men dimensions and the process parameters play a significant
role in the evaluation of flexural strength of any composite
laminate. So, it is necessary to determine the effect of the test-
ing span length on the flexural properties to find an optimum
span length for a particular type of composite material. This
paper solicits to find the optimum testing span length for flex-
ural strength of four commercially used BD Carbon fiber G801,
BD Glass fiber-7781, UD carbon fiber-HTA7 and UD Glass fiber-
EC9756 materials. Bending moment in a three-point bending
test increases from the support points of the beam to a max-
imum value at mid-point, i.e., maximum stress is reached
along a line at the center of the beam, where the bending
moment and the flexural stress is given by the following equa-
tions.
P L PL
Bending moment, M = × = (1)
2 2 4
3PL
Flexural stress, f = (2)
2bd2
where P is the load, L is the length of support span, b is the
width of test specimen and t is the thickness/depth of test
specimen.
If support span-to-depth ratio greater than 16/1 are used
such that deflections in excess of 10% of the support span
occur, the stress in the outer surface of the specimen for a sim-
ple beam can be reasonably approximated with the following
equation [13].
  D 2  d   D 
3PS
f = 1+6 −4 (3)
2bd2 L L L
where D is the deflection of the center line of the specimen at
the middle of the support span.
When large support span-to-depth ratios are used, signif-
icant end forces are developed at the support noses which
will affect the moment in a simply supported beam. Eq. (3)
includes additional terms that are an approximate correction
factor for the influence of these end forces in large support
span-to-depth ratio beams where relatively large deflections
exist. Flexural modulus is calculated by drawing a tangent to
the steepest initial straight-line portion of the load-deflection
curve and is given by Eq. (4).
L3 m
Ef = (4)
4bd3
where m is the slope of the tangent to the initial straight-line
portion of the load-deflection curve.
2. Materials and method
Prepreg materials of Carbon UD (Hexply 913/35%/132/HTA7),
Carbon BD (Hexply 913/40%/G 801), Glass UD (Hexply
913/28%/192/EC 9756) and Glass BD (Hexply 913/37%/7781)
were used to manufacture the laminates. Hand-lay-up
method was used to manufacture the laminates of size
(150 mm × 150 mm) with [0/90]s layer stacking sequence and
were cured in autoclave. The cured laminates are tested for
NDT tests like Ultrasonic C scan test to check the internal
defects like voids and the compaction of the cured laminates
and the C scan images of the four laminates were tested as
shown in Figs. 1–4. The C scan profile indicates the absence of
the voids and internal defects in the cured laminates. All four
 j m a t e r r e s t e c h n o l . 2 0 1 8;7(1):89–95
Fig. 1 – C scan profile of HTA7 laminate.
Fig. 2 – C scan profile of G801 laminate.
Fig. 3 – C scan profile of 7781 laminate.
91
Fig. 4 – C scan profile of EC 9756 laminate.
laminates show the satisfactory attenuation levels and there
is no indication of poor compaction.
The specimens were prepared from the cured laminates
as per the ASTM D 790 standards in rectangular cross-section
specimens (127 mm × 12.7 mm × 2 mm) as shown in Fig. 5.
Three-point bending test was performed on a Universal
Testing Machine (UTM) manufactured by Star Testing System,
Bombay with a maximum load cell of 50,000 N. The tests were
carried at a crosshead speed of 2 mm/min and at four differ-
ent span-to-depth ratio, i.e., 16 mm, 24 mm, 32 mm and 40 mm
and depth of the specimen is taken as 2 mm for all the spec-
imens. Five specimens of each material were tested and the
load-deflection curves are plotted for different materials with
varying span length to determine the flexural strength and
flexural modulus.
3. Results and discussion
The flexural strength was calculated for specimens tested
at different span lengths using the formulae given by Eqs.
(2) (with correction factor) and (3) (without correction fac-
tor). From the characteristic graphs, it shows that the flexural
strength increases with increase in span length for both car-
bon and glass BD (G801 & 7781) as shown in Figs. 6 and 7, while
it decreases with increase in span length for carbon and glass
UD laminates (HTA7 & EC 9756) as shown in Figs. 8 and 9, which
signifies that the BD laminates are more stiffer and stronger
than the UD laminates, as the maximum bending displace-
ment is obtained in the BD laminates.
Flexural modulus was calculated using Eq. (4) to determine
the optimum span length for the selected material laminates.
Numerical analysis was carried out using Altair Hyper
Works.14.0 to evaluate the flexural behavior of Carbon UD-
HTA7 and Carbon BD-G801 with span lengths of 24 mm,
32 mm, 48 mm, 64 mm, 80 mm and 96 mm. The comparison
of values of reaction force and displacement obtained from
numerical analysis results with the experimental analysis
results is presented in Tables 1–4.
Flexural modulus values were obtained from numerical
and experimental results of Carbon UD-HTA7 and Carbon BD-
G801. Characteristic graphs are plotted between the flexural
92 j m a t e r r e s t e c h n o l . 2 0 1 8;7(1):89–95

CFRP-HTA7 CFRP-G801

GFRP-7781 GFRP-EC 9756

Fig. 5 – Flexural test specimens.

1000
Without correction factor
With correction factor
950
(80,931.064)
Flexural strength (MPa)

900
(80,877.238)

850 (64,845.8)

800
(48,786.329)

750 (32,750.241)

700

30 40 50 60 70 80
Span length (mm)

Fig. 6 – Flexural strength curves with the testing span length in Carbon BD-G801 laminate.

900
Without correction factor
With correction factor

800
(80,762.408)
Flexural strength (MPa)

700
(64,669.453)

(80,632.87)
(48,606.077) (64,615.51)
600
(48,576.91)

500

(32,449.267)

400

30 40 50 60 70 80
Span length (mm)

Fig. 7 – Flexural strength curves with the testing span length in Glass BD-7781 laminate.

modulus (Ef ) and support span length (L) for all four materials
as shown in Figs. 10–13.
To find the optimum span length, best fit curve approach
is used. Apart from the span lengths 32 mm, 48 mm, 64 mm
and 80 mm, the numerical analysis is done for two extra span
lengths 24 mm and 96 mm. It is concluded that the polynomial
of degree 3 provides best fit for the data points with minimum
percentage error between numerical results and experimen-
tal results, due to which the data is extrapolated for other two
materials using the equation of curve. The values of flexural
 j m a t e r r e s t e c h n o l . 2 0 1 8;7(1):89–95 93

Without correction factor

1300 With correction factor

(32,1258.233)
1250

Flexural strength (MPa) 1200 (48,1200.92)

(64,1166.694) (80,1164.58)
1150

(64,1111.275)
1100 (80,1102.282)

1050

1000
30 40 50 60 70 80

Span length (mm)

Fig. 8 – Flexural strength curves with the testing span length in Carbon UD-HTA7 laminate.

1600
Without correction factor
With correction factor
1500

1400 (32,1402.93)
Flexural strength (MPa)

(48,1373.921)
(64,1327.5) (80,1322.618)
1300

(48,1222.746)
1200

1100

(64,1026.208)
1000

900
(80,862.502)

800

30 40 50 60 70 80

Span length (mm)

Fig. 9 – Flexural strength curves with the testing span length in Glass UD-EC9756 laminate.

Table 1 – Comparison (reaction force) of the numerical Table 2 – Comparison (displacement) of the numerical
analysis results with the experimental analysis results analysis results with the experimental analysis results
for Carbon UD-HTA7 laminate. for Carbon UD-HTA7 laminate.
Span length (mm) Reaction force (N) Span length (mm) Displacement (mm)

Numerical analysis Experimental analysis Numerical analysis Experimental analysis

24 600 – 24 0.5 –
32 1691.02 1577.8 32 1.95 2.02
48 943.57 940.8 48 3.3 3.66
64 660.47 627.2 64 6.45 6.53
80 563.58 529.2 80 9.75 9.7
96 247 – 96 10 –

modulus are then calculated for various span lengths below
32 mm and above 80 mm. Analysis depicts that the flexural
modulus initially increases and then decreases gradually with
the increase in the span length for all four materials. The
behavior of the flexural modulus shows the optimum span
length is at the point where the maxima of flexural modu-
lus vs span length curve occurs. The values of optimum span
length obtained from the graphs on the modulus basis are the
following. For CFRP-G801 was 80 mm, GFRP-7781 was 67 mm,
CFRP-HTA7 was 48 mm and GFRP-EC 9756 was 42 mm.
 94 j m a t e r r e s t e c h n o l . 2 0 1 8;7(1):89–95

Glass BD-7781
Table 3 – Comparison (reaction force) of the numerical 25000
analysis results with the experimental analysis results

Flexural modulus (MPa)

for Carbon BD-G801 laminate. 20000

Span length (mm) Reaction force (N) 15000

Numerical analysis Experimental analysis 10000

5000
24 1669 –
32 1079 941 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
48 820 617
Span length (mm)
64 595 480
80 449 405 Experimental
96 285 –
Fig. 12 – Flexural modulus behavior with the span length
for Glass BD 7781 laminate.
Table 4 – Comparison (Displacement) of the Numerical
analysis results with the Experimental analysis results
Glass UD-EC9756
for Carbon BD-G801 laminate. 40000

Flexural modulus (MPa)

Span length (mm) Displacement (mm) 35000
30000
25000
Numerical analysis Experimental analysis
20000
24 1.5 – 15000
10000
32 1.65 1.6
5000
48 4.2 3.5 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
64 6.5 5.6
Span length (mm)
80 9 8.8
96 12 – Experimental

Fig. 13 – Flexural modulus behavior with the span length

Carbon BD-G801 for Glass UD-EC9756 laminate.
60000
Flexural modulus (MPa)

50000

40000
4. Conclusion
30000

20000 The behavior of flexural strength and flexural modulus with

10000 the test span length was evaluated for four materials at four
0
different test span lengths as per the ASTM standards. The
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 results depict that the flexural strength increases with the test
Span length (mm) span length for the specimens made out of BD (Bi-Directional)
Numerical Experimental prepreg layers. Similarly, the flexural strength decreases grad-
ually with the increase in test span length for the specimens
Fig. 10 – Flexural modulus behavior with the span length made out of UD (Uni-Directional) prepreg layers. However,
for Carbon BD G-801-laminate. the flexural modulus increases with the increase in the span
length up to a point and then it gradually decreases for both
UD and BD materials.
Carbon UD-HTA7
The experimental results and the numerical analysis
70000 proved a good agreement for all four materials as evident from
60000 the results obtained for the Carbon BD-G-801 and Carbon UD-
Flexural modulus (MPa)

50000 HTA7.
40000

30000 Conflicts of interest

20000

10000 The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Span length (mm) Acknowledgements
Numerical Experimental
This work was carried out in Composite Manufacturing Divi-
Fig. 11 – Flexural modulus behavior with the span length sion, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bangalore. The authors
for Carbon UD-HTA7 laminate. thank Shri. S.V. Suresh, General Manager (CMD), Shri Krishna
Murari, DGM (QA), Shri Mukhyopadhyay, DGM(Shop), Shri.
Pranab Biswal M (QA), Shri. Parthim Er (QA) and all others for
 j m a t e r r e s t e c h n o l . 2 0 1 8;7(1):89–95
their support and encouragement to carry out this research
work.
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