New publication on the effect of grit-blasting on the fracture toughness of hybrid titanium-thermoplastic composite joints

TPRC researcher Vanessa Marinosci published "Effect of grit-blasting on the fracture toughness of hybrid titanium-thermoplastic composite joints" in the International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives. In the article, the correlation between mechanical performance and titanium surface morphology of co-consolidated Ti6Al4V-C/PEKK joints is described. Various surface morphologies were obtained by grit-blasting the titanium surface using different blasting pressures.

The research was conducted by TPRC in collaboration with the University of Twente. The financial support of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and the TPRC members is gratefully acknowledged. Feel free to contact us for more information on this or other subjects in thermoplastic composite technology.

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Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the co-consolidation process.

Fig. 2: (1.) Effect of grit-blasting on surface parameters. (2.) Fracture toughness results with respect to the average roughness of the different titanium surfaces. (3.) Microscopy of crack surface of samples with different average roughness, followed by the corresponding thresholded images. The black areas correspond to interfacial failure (titanium surface visible), the white areas correspond to intraply failure (C/PEKK tape visible).